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Authors: James L. Swanson
Tags: Autobiography
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Mississippi seceded on January 9, 1861, did Davis resign his Senate seat. His farewell speech from the Senate floor on January 21 moved observers to tears, caused a sensation, and won him praise from both Southerners and Northerners. Davis was chosen by acclamation as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America on February 9, 1861. Later, he was elected to asix-year term as president and was inaugurated on February 22, 1862, George Washington’s birthday.
Lincoln and Davis were both born in rustic Kentucky cabins, one year and one hundred miles apart, but their early years could not have been more different. Born February 12, 1809, Lincoln lacked family sponsors. His father, Thomas, an uneducated, illiterate, restless manual laborer who seemed proud of his limitations, made no effort to educate his son. Thomas Lincoln moved his family from Kentucky to Indiana and then to Illinois, but wherever he lived, success and prosperity eluded him. After young Abe’s mother died when he was nine years old, he lived in the squalor of his father’s cabin like a wild, feral child. When Thomas brought home a new wife, Sarah Bush Johnson, the rough, downtrodden state of Abe and his siblings horrified her. But she grew to love them and, though uneducated herself, took a special interest in her tall, awkward stepson. Abe had less than a year of formal schooling, but he learned to read and write and perform elementary mathematics. “Abraham Lincoln, his hand and pen, he will be good, but God knows when,” he inscribed in his boyhood sum book. While his indifferent father exploited him as a manual laborer—Abe had a rail-splitting axe thrust into his hands at age nine—his stepmother encouraged his learning. Years later, after being elected president, Lincoln would not leave Illinois without paying her an emotional—and perhaps final, he thought—visit.
When young Abe Lincoln reached maturity he had no connections, no money, no proper education, and no prospects beyond following his father’s footsteps into a lifetime of physical toil. But he was driven by ambition for a better life. He widened his world through a variety of occupations: flatboat river pilot, surveyor, storekeeper, and postmaster. He studied law on his own, became a member of the Illinois bar, and joined a two-man firm. He prospered in that trade, earning a reputation for honesty and ability while he rode the circuit from courthouse to courthouse. Unlike Jefferson Davis, who possessed a large private library and who studied all manner of subjects,Lincoln owned few books, but he read narrowly and deeply in politics, Shakespeare, the Bible, and history.
Elected to Congress for a single term in 1846, Lincoln made little impression on official life in the nation’s capital. When war broke out between the United States and Mexico, President James K. Polk and Senator Thomas Hart Benton viewed the conflict as an opportunity to pursue America’s Manifest Destiny and create an empire that stretched from sea to sea. Congressman Abraham Lincoln opposed the war, said so on the floor of the House, and quibbled with President Polk about whether hostilities had begun on American or Mexican soil. Lincoln implied that the president had provoked the war to justify an unlawful land grab. In stark contrast, Jefferson Davis resigned his seat in Congress, led Mississippi troops in combat against superior numbers of enemy infantry and deadly cavalry lancers, and distinguished himself in the Battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista. Had Davis not left Washington on July 4, 1846, he would likely have met Lincoln there in 1847. Lincoln and Davis were in Washington at the same time in December 1848, and also in early 1849, after Davis had been elected to the Senate, but they did not meet then.
At the end of Lincoln’s undistinguished single term, he went home to Illinois and rose to prominence in the Illinois bar. Never a lawyer of national renown, like Daniel Webster,
Lincoln and Davis were both born in rustic Kentucky cabins, one year and one hundred miles apart, but their early years could not have been more different. Born February 12, 1809, Lincoln lacked family sponsors. His father, Thomas, an uneducated, illiterate, restless manual laborer who seemed proud of his limitations, made no effort to educate his son. Thomas Lincoln moved his family from Kentucky to Indiana and then to Illinois, but wherever he lived, success and prosperity eluded him. After young Abe’s mother died when he was nine years old, he lived in the squalor of his father’s cabin like a wild, feral child. When Thomas brought home a new wife, Sarah Bush Johnson, the rough, downtrodden state of Abe and his siblings horrified her. But she grew to love them and, though uneducated herself, took a special interest in her tall, awkward stepson. Abe had less than a year of formal schooling, but he learned to read and write and perform elementary mathematics. “Abraham Lincoln, his hand and pen, he will be good, but God knows when,” he inscribed in his boyhood sum book. While his indifferent father exploited him as a manual laborer—Abe had a rail-splitting axe thrust into his hands at age nine—his stepmother encouraged his learning. Years later, after being elected president, Lincoln would not leave Illinois without paying her an emotional—and perhaps final, he thought—visit.
When young Abe Lincoln reached maturity he had no connections, no money, no proper education, and no prospects beyond following his father’s footsteps into a lifetime of physical toil. But he was driven by ambition for a better life. He widened his world through a variety of occupations: flatboat river pilot, surveyor, storekeeper, and postmaster. He studied law on his own, became a member of the Illinois bar, and joined a two-man firm. He prospered in that trade, earning a reputation for honesty and ability while he rode the circuit from courthouse to courthouse. Unlike Jefferson Davis, who possessed a large private library and who studied all manner of subjects,Lincoln owned few books, but he read narrowly and deeply in politics, Shakespeare, the Bible, and history.
Elected to Congress for a single term in 1846, Lincoln made little impression on official life in the nation’s capital. When war broke out between the United States and Mexico, President James K. Polk and Senator Thomas Hart Benton viewed the conflict as an opportunity to pursue America’s Manifest Destiny and create an empire that stretched from sea to sea. Congressman Abraham Lincoln opposed the war, said so on the floor of the House, and quibbled with President Polk about whether hostilities had begun on American or Mexican soil. Lincoln implied that the president had provoked the war to justify an unlawful land grab. In stark contrast, Jefferson Davis resigned his seat in Congress, led Mississippi troops in combat against superior numbers of enemy infantry and deadly cavalry lancers, and distinguished himself in the Battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista. Had Davis not left Washington on July 4, 1846, he would likely have met Lincoln there in 1847. Lincoln and Davis were in Washington at the same time in December 1848, and also in early 1849, after Davis had been elected to the Senate, but they did not meet then.
At the end of Lincoln’s undistinguished single term, he went home to Illinois and rose to prominence in the Illinois bar. Never a lawyer of national renown, like Daniel Webster,
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