Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/88

58 Hall, and their son; and Dennis and Matilda Johnston Hanks, and their four children; thirteen persons in all. The day of departure approached. On the day before the start was to be made, Abraham, Dennis, and John visited the little hamlet of Gentryville and bade adieu to the Gentrys senior and junior, John Baldwin, the blacksmith, who was one of Lincoln's staunchest and most reliable friends, Jones, Lincoln's merchant friend, and the various neighbors who were casually there; they then visited and bade goodbye to Dan Turnham, the constable, at whose house Abraham commenced his studies in law by reading the "Revised Statutes of Indiana" then took affectionate leave of "Uncle" Wood, Stephen McDaniels, John Duthan, Mrs. Crawford, the Grigsbys (the entente cordiale having been reestablished between them), John Romine, and the rest. And as the awkward and uncouth youth, all unconscious of the immortal career for which he was destined, lay down for the last time to sleep in the humble cabin which had sheltered him for thirteen years, we can well imagine that his sensibilities were profoundly stirred, and that his feelings found relief in tears.

The animating principle of Thomas Lincoln's migration is not difficult to divine: The part of Kentucky where manhood found him was sterile at best. The free laborer had little chance for social and material advancement; a niggerless white was regarded as a social pariah. Thomas Lincoln inherited rigid notions of humanity from a Quaker ancestry which recognized slavery as a crime; so he did what other conscientious men were doing in similar circumstances: he left a State where caste was securely enthroned for a