Untenable Theories About Lincoln's Childhood Environment.

The following excerpts present Abraham Lincoln's parents and his early home life in an unfavorable light. The stigma which has rested on the President's pioneer father and the exaggerated conditions existing in the early Lincoln home is not in harmony with documentary evidence:

• "The old gentleman [Thomas Lincoln] was not only void of energy but dull." Herndon. Lincoln, pg 6.

• "No more ignorant boy than Thomas could be found in the back woods." Beveridge. Abraham Lincoln, pg 12.

• "The whole house squalid, cheerless, and utterly void of elevating inspiration." Schurz. Abraham Lincoln, pg 12.

• "Here was the home, and here were its occupants, all humble, all miserably poor." Holland. Life of Abraham Lincoln, pg 23.

• "He  [Thomas Lincoln] was no toiler but from all accounts an ignorant, shiftless vagabond." Coleman. The Sad Story of Nancy Hanks, pg 8.

• ''It was here that Abraham Lincoln was born. The manger at Bethlehem was not a more unlikely birthplace." Sheppard. Abraham Lincoln, pg 8.

• "He [Thomas Lincoln] was a shiftless fellow, never succeeding in anything, who could neither read nor write." Stephenson. Lincoln, pg 8.

• "Reared in gripping, grinding, pinching penury, and pallid poverty, and the most squalid destitution possible to conceive." Peters. Abraham Lincoln's Religion, pg 3

• "Lincoln was born in a degradation very far below respectable poverty in the State of Kentucky and lived in that poverty all his life." Chafin. Lincoln. Man of Sorrows, pg 10.

• "In the midst of the most unpromising circumstances that ever witnessed the advent of a boy into the world," Nicolay & Hay. Abraham Lincoln, A History, Vol 1, pg 25.

• "Nobody ever accused him [Thomas Lincoln] of building a house or to pretend to do more than a few little odd jobs connected with such an undertaking." Lamon. Life of Lincoln, pg 9.

• "The father was called a carpenter but not good at his trade, a shiftless, migratory squatter by invincible tendencies and a very ignorant man." Morse, Abraham Lincoln, Vol 1, pg 10.

• "Thomas seems to have been the only member of the family whose character was not respectable. He was an idler, trifling, poor, a hunter, and a rover." Lamon. Life of Lincoln, pg 8.

• "In childhood and youth, his [Abraham Lincoln's] intimate associates and putative relatives a gross, illiterate, and superstitious rabble." Cathey. True Genesis of a Wonderful Man, pg 193.

• "Thomas Lincoln never prospered like Josiah and Mordecai (biblical) and never seemed to have left the impression of his goodness or of anything else on any man." Charnwood. Abraham Lincoln, pg 4.

• "Thomas Lincoln, a poverty-stricken man whom misfortune had seemingly chosen for her own, and whose ambitions were blighted and hope almost dead." Peters. Abraham Lincoln's Religion, pg 3.

• "There could hardly be a poorer family than that which now undertook to support its narrow, hopeless life in that dull corner of the earth's teeming surface." Stoddard. Abraham Lincoln, pg 11.

• "He [Thomas Lincoln] reached the age of 27 the year of his marriage, a brawny, wandering laborer, a poor white, unlettered and untaught except for the trade of carpenter." Strunsky. Abraham Lincoln, pg 5.

• "At the time of his [Thomas Lincoln] birth, twenty-eight years before, his parents—drifting, roaming, people, struggling with poverty—were dwellers in the Virginia mountains." Stephenson. Lincoln, pg 4.

• "His [Abraham Lincoln's] father was an ignorant man, amiable enough, but colorlessly negative, without the strength of character and without ambitions worthy of the name." Hill. Lincoln the Lawyer, pg 6.

• "Thomas Lincoln and Enlow had a regular set-to fight about the matter in which encounter Lincoln bit off the end of Enlow's nose. Finally, Lincoln, to clear himself, moved to Indiana." Weik. The Real Lincoln, pg 31.

• "I never could understand how so great and good a man as old Abe could have descended from such a low breed and entirely worthless vagabond as Thomas Lincoln." Cathey. True Genesis of a Wonderful Man, pg 239.

• "Thomas Lincoln was an ignorant, shiftless, worthless, illiterate man . . . he thought it a waste of time for young Abraham to learn to read and write as he could do neither." Chafin. Lincoln, Man of Sorrows, pg 11.

• "So pained have some persons been by the necessity of recognizing Thomas Lincoln as the father of the President that they have welcomed a happy escape from this so miserable paternity." Morse. Abraham Lincoln, Vol 1, pg 7.

• "But Lincoln rose from a lower depth than any of them. From a stagnant, putrid pool; like the gas which set fire by its own energy and self-combustible nature rises in jets blazing, clear, and bright." Herndon. Herndon's Lincoln, Vol 1, pg 9.

• "Born not only in poverty, but surrounded by want and suffering; favored in nothing; wanting in everything which makes up the joys of life . . . it was literal truth that 'he had nowhere to lay a head.' " Cathey. True Genesis of a Wonderful Man, pg 255.

• "The domestic surroundings under which the babe [Abraham Lincoln] came into life were wretched in the extreme. . . . Rough, course, low, ignorant, and poverty-stricken surroundings were about the child." Morse. Abraham Lincoln, Vol 1, pg 9.

• "In childhood and youth, his [Abraham Lincoln's] place of abode a squalid cabin in a howling wilderness, his meal as an ashen crust, his bed a pile of leaves, his nominal guardian a shiftless and worthless vagabond." Cathey. True Genesis of a Wonderful Man, pg. 193

• "His [Abraham Lincoln's] father was a typical 'poor Southern white,' shiftless and improvident, without ambition for himself or his children, constantly looking for a new piece of ground where he might make a living without much work." Schurz. Abraham Lincoln, pg 12.

• "Abraham Lincoln came of the most unpromising stock on the continent, 'the poor white trash' of the south. His shiftless father moved from place to place in the western country, failing where everybody else was successful in making a living, and the boy spent the most susceptible years of his life under no discipline but that of degrading poverty." Woodrow Wilson. Division and Reunion, pg 216.

Elucidation

I'm well aware that historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles. In this time period, rumors and innuendos have tainted the truth in "Lincoln" books, thus besmirching future writings.

Read my article debunking Thomas Lincoln being a boorish, poor idiot.

Thomas Lincoln's, President Lincoln's Father, Fifteen Houses Chronology.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.