Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV WHEN LINCOLN SWAPPED HORSES Another incident in the life of Lincoln at Salem deserves mention as showing his practical way of meeting the emergency of a stranger in sore need of immediate assistance. So far as I am aware, it was the only time Lincoln ever "swapped horses." In 1830, Dr. Charles Chandler, with his family arrived in what is now Cass County. He became, from the time of his arrival in that vicinity, a valuable professional addition to the settlement, and his practice extended over a wide area of the country bordering the Sangamon and Illinois river-bottoms and prairie-lands adjacent. Like most early settlers of his time, his finances were limited, and what money he brought with him was expended first for labour to build his cabin; for the purchase of two horses and a few domestic animals; and such medical supplies as his increasing practice required his furnishing to all his patients. The Doctor selected and had located his new home site on the edge of one of the SangamonRiver bottoms bordered by timbered bluffs. This tract of one hundred and sixty acres combined the three essentials of pioneer life, ? timber, water, and good land. He proceeded at once to build a log-cabin near the centre of the tract in order to hold a pre-emptor's right to both eighty acres, and intended to secure government title to it at his later convenience. In those days, gold and silver coin was very scarce, and what little there was brought into the country quickly found its way into the land-office for entry of land; a system of barter supplying its place in all ordinary transaction. The early settlers therefore usually deferred the entry of the tracts of land which they had selected. They built their house and raised one or more crops, before purchasing at two dollars per a...