abraham lincoln Essay -- essays research papers

Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky on February 12, 1809, to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Thomas had been apprenticed as a carpenter after the death of his father and the passing of the family property to his eldest brother as required under the system of primogeniture. Thorough dint of hard work or with funds from his family, Thomas acquired enough money to purchase a farm, but his ownership was soon challenged. Kentucky had been surveyed in such a primitive manner that boundaries were never certain. After having the titles of two other farm parcels challenged, Thomas tired of Kentucky and in 1816 moved his family to southern Indiana. The federal government had surveyed Indiana in a manner that insured sound titles. Abraham Lincoln later explained his father's move as "partly on account of slavery; but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles." If distaste for slavery motivated Thomas Lincoln to leave Kentucky, it was probably anger at the in fluence of the planter class rather than concern for the lot of the slaves, as Thomas never expressed any moral qualms about the institution. The Lincoln family's problems in Kentucky were not atypical for frontier settlers. Traditionally, the frontier has been portrayed as an agrarian idyll, a vision of sturdy and prosperous yeomen farmers serving as a bulwark of democracy. In fact, the frontier provided as many opportunities for failure as for success. Settlers were plagued by sickness and dea...