LYCOS RETRIEVER 
President Abraham Lincoln: New Salem
built 115 days ago
As a young man, Abraham Lincoln took a boatload of merchandise down the Mississippi River from New Salem to New Orleans. At one point the boat slid onto a dam and was set free only after heroic efforts. In later years, while traveling on the Great Lakes, Lincoln’s ship ran a foul of a sandbar. These two similar experiences led him to conceive his invention. Abraham Lincoln received Patent #6,469 for "A Device for Buoying Vessels Over Shoals" on May 22, 1849.
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The two finest collections of Lincoln manuscripts are available on microfilm from the Library of Congress: Abraham Lincoln Papers, 97 reels; Herndon-Weik Papers, 15 reels. In addition, a major documentary project promises much new insight into Lincoln's career. The Lincoln Legal Papers, directed by Cullom B. Davis in Springfield, Illinois, will be published in upcoming years on CD-ROM.
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Among the severely afflicted families were Lincoln's friends the Rutledges. Originally from South Carolina, they had been among the first to settle in New Salem, opening a tavern and boarding house, where Lincoln stayed and took meals when he first arrived. He knew the family well and had become friends with Anna Mayes Rutledge, a bright, pretty young woman with flowing blond hair and large blue eyes. In August 1835, Ann took sick. As she lay in bed in her family's cabin, Lincoln visited her often. "It was very evident that he was much distressed," remembered a neighbor named John Jones.
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Richard N. Current, The Lincoln Nobody Knows (New York, 1958), consists of judicious essays on some of the controversial subjects of Lincoln's life and career. Charles B. Strozier, Lincoln's Quest for Union: Public and Private Meanings (New York, 1982), is a useful psychobiography. Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana, Ill., 1994), focuses on valuable and rarely used sources. Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York, 1982), is the best all-around reference work on Lincoln and associated subjects.
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There Abraham spent much of his spare time, early showing a marked talent for storytelling and mimicry. He grew tall and strong, and his father often hired him out to work for neighbors. Through this came the chance, with Gentry's son Allen, to take a flatboat of produce down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans - Lincoln's first sight of anything other than frontier simplicity.
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Lincoln and his opponent, incumbent Senator Stephen Douglas, carried out a series of seven debates throughout Illinois. The major difference between them was Douglas' insistence that it was up to new States to decide if they would be free states or not. While the Republicans received the majority of the votes in the election, the majority of the legislature ended up Democratic and Douglas was re-elected.
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