The Rail Splitter

The Rail Splitter or: How Lincoln learned to stop worrying and love the South


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Considered to be one of the most consequential politicians of 19th century America, Abraham Lincoln, also known by his nickname "the rail splitter", due to his hard-working attitude, led the way for perhaps the deadliest conflict in American continental history.

He was born on February 12, 1809, to Thomas Lincoln, a well-respected member of the county of Hardin located in Kentucky, and Nancy (Hanks) Lincoln, a descendent from a planter household in Virginia. Born on a the family property near Hodgenville, inside a small log cabin, which would be his home for the next few years, he was brought up into his families way of life, living with what they could, and his experiences here would later influence his "hard, rail splitter" personality later on in life. During this time, his father was acquiring property throughout the county, and by 1811, the family moved to a far more fertile property by the name of Knob Creek Farm. It would be here in which Lincoln would recount some of his earliest memories, such as the death of his newborn brother, Thomas Lincoln Jnr. who died a few days after his birth in 1812.

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Thomas Lincoln pictured in 1849

For a number of years, Thomas Lincoln was being embroiled in a number of large scale boundary disputes by surrounding farmers, and by the mid 1810's, he was beginning to fear he would lose all that he owned and bought up to that point. Comfort from continuing disputes would come in the summer of 1816, when he finally won a court battle with a neighbouring farm over the rights to his Knob Creek Farmland, and by the winter of that same year, due to becoming the annual road surveyor, he would become one of the richest property owning men in the county.

It was also during these years of the early-mid 1810's in which Abraham's mother, Nancy, began to teach the young child to read and to write. Lincoln's own recollections from these years were that his mother was an extraordinary teacher, and to some, she was a more pious, more honourable person than her husband, and for where Abraham received his "sweet and forbearer" personality. Tragedy struck however, for in the autumn of 1818, the 9 year old Lincoln would witness his mother’s final breaths as she was taken front her families grasp by the death winds of Tuberculosis. Over a period of 14 days, she went through a number of various stages, falling, then as suddenly, waking to sound of her husband rushing to her side. Finally, she fell asleep for the final time on November 19, 1818, and after a few minutes, she was dead.

Standing besides their mother, Sarah, Lincoln's older sister, as well as Lincoln himself, began to enter a state of melancholy. Thomas also suffered during this time, with his health declining as well as the aloofness of his two children, he began to search for new opportunities in life. It was around this time, following the burying of his late wife, in which he turned to his Church; the Baptist church. Following the death of his father in 1786, the young Thomas began to seek out help from Church and faith. This came in the form of the Baptist church, which held a pro-slavery view. Whilst his brothers attended the Primitive Baptist church, which held a strict moral code against slavery, he began to be initiated with the so-called southern way, and by his mid 20's, he was vocally supporting the plantation system.

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A young Lincoln reading by the fireplace

Over the years, and especially after his wife's death, he began to seek out new help on his farm, as his 10 year-old son could not achieve much work, his 12 year old daughter was not expected to, and his failing health was not helping his cause. So on March 16, 1819, using much of money he had gained over the past decade, Thomas Lincoln purchased a slave, a move that would change the family forever. Named "Jeremy", he was used around the farm to help with planting and harvesting crop that Thomas grew when he was not working. Over the next few months, Thomas', as well as the young Lincoln's (to an extent) view on the African-Americans began to change, deform, and warp, to perhaps a nearly identical view of slaves and slavery as those found in the deep south. This early initiation into slavery and the racism of such would profoundly affect the young child for years, and even decades to come.
 
For years, Thomas Lincoln was embroiled in constant legal battles over his land. He lost much, he gained little, but by the 1820's, the only land he did hold was that of the Knob Creek Farmland. However, it would be in 1823 in which the family would be taken aback by yet another court case. Kentucky's archaic land laws, which did not truly define who owned which land, continued to set the family back, and in 1823, the constant attacks, the constant cases filed against Thomas broke. Tired of the Kentucky law, decided to move southward, towards the cotton belt, towards the slave plantations, towards Shelbyville, Tennessee. The lasting effect on the young Abraham would be immense.

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In Tennessee, the Lincoln family would find slavery far more brutal than in Kentucky

It would be here in Tennessee in which slavery within the Lincoln family would entrench itself more. Thomas began to grow cotton crop, investing in the relatively new technology of the cotton gin to help speed up production. As he profited off the work of now 6 slaves he brought over a number of years, Abraham Lincoln himself began to believe in a strict version of Slavery. During his later years in politics, he would become known as the "rail splitter", a nickname originating from not just his tough persona, but also his hard working attitude. However, this tough persona had a dark beginning, in which Lincoln, during his years as an adolescent, brutalised his slaves, much to his fathers dismay; because despite owning other humans as property, he felt that he needed to care for his slaves with care, in which the younger Lincoln did not see much for. For whilst he was attending school during his early years in Tennessee, he befriended Toby Mullins, the grandson of an Irish immigrant who had purchased slaves in the 18th century, and the institution was there ever since. Toby managed to sway the adolescent Lincoln to a more "southern" way of thinking, and from then on, Abe was beginning to get far more violent.

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A depiction of the young "rail splitter"

While the ideology of slavery was being won over in the head of the now fully thinking Abraham, he began to read. Starting from an early age, he was taught how to read from his mother, and from then on, he never stopped. Considered an intellectual by his political contemporaries, some of the earliest literature including slavery that he read was the accounts of the British slave trade, and the defence of slavery by Thomas Jefferson. As he read, the institution of slavery was boring a bigger hole into his head, and by the mid 1820's, he was essentially a slave to the institution of slavery. Towards his 18th birthday, he began to read more modern slave-based literature, and began to have a deeper understanding of the system. Reading accounts of John C. Calhoun's early defence of slavery struck a cord with Lincoln, and in a moment that would spark his political career, he would begin "protesting" the perceived abolitionism of the then president, John Quincy Adams. Either towards his family members or to his family's slaves, he constant harped on about Adams' abolitionist nature, and in his head, he was constantly aiding his own argument for slavery. However, the seeds of the future Abraham had been sown, and what mattered now was time.


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John C. Calhoun, a man that would leave a lasting impression on Abraham Lincoln
 
if Lincoln brutalised his slaves he will not get much work from them and will lose money and sooner or later the slaves will try to kill him.
 
if Lincoln brutalised his slaves he will not get much work from them and will lose money and sooner or later the slaves will try to kill him.

You got to remember that at that point, Lincoln was essentially a head strong teenager, and despite knowing a a lot about the world, he still didn't truly know (or perhaps care) about the results of the strict punishment on his slaves.
 
The over seer who did that was fired.
"Scars of a whipped slave, Photo taken at Baton Rouge, Louisiana 1863. In his own words, "Overseer Artayou Carrier whipped me. I was two months in bed sore from the whipping. My master come after I was whipped; he discharged the overseer." This is the DVIC version "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip...Cicatrices_de_flagellation_sur_un_esclave.jpg

And you think deeds like that didn't go unpunished 9/10 of the time? Face it: there is no justification, defense, or whitewashing that can make slavery any less the practice of barbarians
 
And you think deeds like that didn't go unpunished 9/10 of the time? Face it: there is no justification, defense, or whitewashing that can make slavery any less the practice of barbarians

Well yeah, it's more the perception of it as complete barbarism rather than barbarism for the sake of business and maximum profit. In general they wanted abuse to be more scary than it was debilitating just for the sake of keeping their slaves working which is why that overseer was punished. Of course it's not to say they aren't terrible (they where bad, but only somewhat worse than the people running northern factories).
 
And you think deeds like that didn't go unpunished 9/10 of the time? Face it: there is no justification, defense, or whitewashing that can make slavery any less the practice of barbarians

That is true.
Slavery was never a good thing.
my point was there were practical limit as to how much you could punish slaves and not have problem like them being unable to work or having them try to kill you or run away.

The overseer was fired not because he was cruel. He was fired because he damaged the slave to the point he could not work for 2 months.
 
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