Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, on the 12th day of February, 1809. The log-cabin which was his birth-place was built on the south branch of Nolin¿s Creek, three miles from the village of Hodgensville, on land which was then in the county of Hardin, but is now included in that of La Rue. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was born in 1778; his mother¿s maiden name was Nancy Hanks. The Lincoln family, which appears to have been of unmixed English descent, came to Kentucky from Berks County, Pennsylvania, to which place tradition or conjecture asserts they had emigrated from Massachusetts. But they did not remain long in Pennsylvania, since they seem to have gone before 1752 to Rockingham, County Virginia, which state was then one with that of Kentucky. There is, however, so much doubt as to these details of their early history, that it is not certain whether they were at first emigrants directly from England to Virginia, an offshoot of the historic Lincoln family in Massachusetts, or of the highly respectable Lincolns of Pennsylvania.1 This obscurity is plainly due to the great poverty and lowly station of the Virginian Lincolns. ¿My parents,¿ said President Lincoln, in a brief autobiographic sketch, ¿were both born of undistinguished families¿ second families, perhaps, I should say.¿ To this he adds that his paternal grandfather was Abraham Lincoln, who migrated from Rockingham, County Virginia, to Kentucky, ¿about 1781 or 2,¿ although his cousins and other relatives all declare this grandsire¿s name to have been Mordecai¿a striking proof of the ignorance and indifference of the family respecting matters seldom neglected.