Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV THE LJNCOLNS LEAVE INDIANA—THE JOURNEY TO ILLINOIS —ABRAHAM LINCOLN STARTS OUT FOR HIMSELF In THjEnn£oL.Land3fl.w.h£tt..Ateaham Lincoln was twenty-one years old, his father, Thomas Lincoln, decided to leave Indiana, llie YesoTfn3ennis Hanks gives for this re- movaT'was a disease called the "milk-sick." Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and several of their relatives who had followed them from Kentucky had died of it. The cattle had been carried off by it. Neither brute nor human life seemed to be safe. As Dennis Hanks says: "This was reason enough (ain't it) for leaving?" Any one who has traveled through the portions of Spencer County in which the Lincolns settled will respect Thomas Lincoln for his energy in moving. When covered with timber, as the land was when he chose his farm, it no doubt promised well; but fourteen years of hard labor showed him that the soil was niggardly and the future of the country unpromising. To-day, sixty-five years since the Lincolns left Spencer County, the country remains as it was then, dull, commonplace, unfruitful. The towns show no signs of energy or prosperity. There are no leading streets or buildings; no man's house is better than his neighbor's, and every man's house is ordinary. For a long distance on each side of Gen- tryville as one passes by rail, no superior farm is to be seen, no prosperous farm or manufactory. It is a dead monotonous country, where no possibilities of quick wealth have been discovered, and which only centuries of tilling and fertilizing can make prosperous. The place chosen for their new home was the Sangamon country in central Illinois. It was at that day a country of great renown in the West, the name meaning "The land where there is plenty to eat." One of the family—John Hanks, a c... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.