abraham lincoln Essay -- essays research papers

Abraham capital of Nebraska was born in Hardin County, Kentucky on February 12, 1809, to doubting Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks. Thomas had been apprenticed as a carpenter after the goal of his father and the passing of the family property to his eldest brother as inevitable under the system of primogeniture. Thorough dint of hard work or with specie from his family, Thomas acquired enough money to purchase a farm, but his possession 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 fathers move as "partly on account of slavery but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land titles." If distaste for slavery propel Thomas Lincoln to leave Kentucky, it was pro bably anger at the bewitch 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 familys problems in Kentucky were not atypical for frontier settlers. Traditionally, the frontier has been portrayed as an rural 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...