Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/23

 IDA M. TARBELL

the many wrongs of history—and they are legion—there is none in our American chapter at least which is graver than that which has been done the parents, and particularly the mother, of Abraham Lincoln. Of course, I refer to the widespread tradition that Lincoln was born of that class known in the South as "poor whites," that his father was not Thomas Lincoln, as his biographers insist on declaring, but a rich and cultured planter of another State than Kentucky, and that his mother not only gave a fatherless boy to the world, but herself was a nameless child. The tradition has always lacked particularity. For instance, there has been large difference of opinion about the planter who fathered Abraham, who he was and where he came from. One story calls him Enloe, another Calhoun, another Hardin, and several different States claim him. Only five years ago a book was published in North Carolina to prove that Lincoln's father was a resident of that State. The bulk of the testimony offered in this instance came from men and women who had been born long after Abraham Lincoln, had never seen him, and never heard the tale they repeated until long after his election to the Presidency. Of the truth of these ix