Gary L. Knepp
New Haven, Connecticut, March 6, 1860. The good folks of this northeastern college town came out to hear a mysterious Westerner speak about the controversial political topic of the day. They crowded into Union Hall, taking every seat and all of the available standing room. This man had taken New York City by storm a few days before after setting the prairies afire in 1858 with his scorching rhetoric and homespun humor.
He stood at the dais waiting for the stirring introduction to conclude. At six foot four inches tall, he towered over his audience. His painfully thin frame concealed enormous physical strength. His new suit was rumpled; his hair tousled.
From the first word, spoken in his characteristic high-pitched, western twang, Abraham Lincoln captured his audience. His scathing condemnation of slavery prompted frequent laughter and loud, sustained applause from his New Englander audience.
One sentence in his speech reflected a common theme of American politics: anybody through hard work and grasping the opportunities of a free economy can pull themselves out of poverty:
“I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling [ splitting] rails, work on a flatboat.”
The bland statement “work on a flat boat” conceals a significant or even transformational event in Lincoln’s life. In 1828 Lincoln was nineteen years old, an experienced laborer- skilled in the use of axe and adze. He eagerly accepted businessman Alan Gentry’s offer to sign on as an $8 per month deckhand on a flatboat bound for New Orleans.
The two men spent a couple of months building their boat: cutting down the trees, hand-hewing the logs, framing and sheathing their 40-foot by 15-foot vessel. They used a long oar sweep to help steer their awkward craft and poles to propel it in shallow water. They loaded the flat boat with local products such as corn, potatoes and salted pork in barrels intended as cheap, high-energy food for slaves.
By mid-April they were ready. They pushed off into the mighty Ohio River near Rockport, Indiana, for New Orleans nearly 1300 miles away. The boat probably cruised down the river
at an average speed of six miles per hour.
Flatboating was fraught with danger. The rivers were wild and undammed. When rivers were shallow, sandbars and islands emerged from the river bed; often catching the unwary in their grasp. The unfortunate boatman spent hours of backbreaking labor unloading the vessel, hoping to raise it off the bar. Rainswollen rivers posed dangers, too: boils, whirlpools, sunken branches, and large trees hurtling downstream. And there were always river pirates and conmen lurking around.
The business plan was to reach the so-called Louisiana “Sugar Coast” located along the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Once there, they expected to trade their products with the plantation owners for cotton and sugar for sale in New Orleans. Once the trip was completed the boat would be sold. The men would return home by steamboat.
Gentry and Lincoln finished another day trading their goods. They pulled their boat to the eastern bank of the Mississippi River at a point about sixty miles upstream of New Orleans, tied the boat to the shore and retired.
In the depths of the night, the boat was boarded by a gang of seven black men, (It is unknown as to whether the men were free or enslaved.) brandishing hickory clubs. They intended to rob the voyagers. During the ensuing melee, both Lincoln and Gentry were wounded. But they held their own. Gentry yelled to Lincoln to get the gun and shoot. The ruse worked, as there was no gun. The raiders fled.
They arrived at their destination soon afterward. The two men spent several days exploring the exotic city of New Orleans. The trade goods and the flatboat were sold. The men booked passage on a steam riverboat for their return home.
Thirty-six years later President Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to a fellow Kentuckian explaining his views on slavery:
“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel,”
What did Lincoln mean? Are the statements to be taken literally- that he was born anti-slavery? It seems unlikely. For many people, slavery was a complicated subject requiring consciousness of thought to reach a position. It may have been religion, politics, economics, family history, or a personal event that informed the decision.
William Herndon, Lincoln’s friend and law partner, wrote a biography of the president. He pointed to the New Orleans trip as the origin of his friend’s anti-slavery views:
“He saw negroes in chains-whipped and scourged. Against this inhumanity, his sense of right and justice rebelled, and his mind and conscience were awakened…”
Modern historians generally dispute the validity of Herndon’s story. But absent any more authentic accounting, Herndon’s version has the ring of possibility to it.
There is an irony here. It is the story of a nineteen-year-old adventurer who was wounded in a robbery attempt by criminals of the race he would liberate decades later.