No matter how hard he tried, the lanky young man could not
get the small wooden boat unstuck. Finally conceding that there was no way to
get his loaded barge any further down the river, Abraham Lincoln decided to
offload his supplies and maybe lighten the load enough to get past the
obstruction. Perhaps by asking one of the gathering crowd of spectators where
he had become stuck, he would have learned that the settlement’s name was New
Salem.
Just after he turned 21, Lincoln found himself alone. He had
moved to central Illinois with his family, but after the brutal winter of 1830;
which came to be known as the “Winter of the Deep Snow;” his parents had
decided to abandon their new home near present-day Decatur and head back to
Indiana. Abraham had no desire to go back to the Hoosier State, so he stayed
behind.
Seeking employment, Lincoln soon crossed paths with Denton
Offutt, also a transplanted Kentuckian, who had dreams of running a flatboat
line from Central Illinois to New Orleans, using the Sangamon, Illinois and
Mississippi Rivers to facilitate trade between the two regions. Lincoln and
Offutt; four years his senior; became fast friends, and soon Lincoln was a
partner in the burgeoning commercial enterprise.
In March 1831, Lincoln and two other workers helped Offutt
to build a flatboat and load it with supplies bound for New Orleans. They
boarded the boat and started down the Sangamon River, but they didn’t make it
very far.
Twenty miles downriver, the boat ran aground on a mill dam
which had been built two years earlier by two of New Salem’s founders, James
Rutledge and John Camron, to more efficiently use the river’s water for a grist
mill and a saw mill. After much effort, Lincoln and his team managed to free
the boat from the mill dam, but in the meantime Offutt had been struck by
inspiration. He believed the settlement of around 150 people could use a
general store, and here he was with a boatload of supplies. He could use the
ample timber and the functioning saw mill to build his boats here – and this
jack-of-all-trades Lincoln could run things for him. New Salem would be the
place where Denton Offutt and Abraham Lincoln would build their business.
No one in 1831 could have imagined how this moment changed
American history. Perhaps Lincoln might have gone on to be a successful river
merchant or settled somewhere else. Maybe he would not have discovered the need
for infrastructure improvements in central Illinois and never given politics
another thought. The moment of Lincoln’s unceremonious arrival in New Salem
holds such historical importance that it is depicted in a mural in the south
hallway of the first floor of the Illinois state capitol.
But business success did not await Denton Offutt. Lincoln
went to work in the general store, and became quite popular with his new
neighbors, while Offutt floundered as a businessman, eventually going bankrupt
and fleeing his debts. Another businessman attempted to resurrect the dream of
running a line; this time with a steamboat; up the Sangamon River, but the venture
failed when the river proved to be virtually unnavigable.
Determined to open this commercial route into his adopted
home region, Lincoln ran for the state legislature in 1832 on a platform of
supporting infrastructure improvements: specifically waterways. His New Salem
neighbors overwhelmingly supported him, giving him 277 of their 300 ballots,
but his appeal did not extend much beyond the village and he suffered a
terrible defeat. It was the first of many.
Facing defeat, he remarked that he had “been too familiar
with disappointments to be very much chagrined.”
Lincoln now partnered with yet another Kentuckian, William
F. Berry, in a new general store. The two partners gradually outlasted
competitors in New Salem, buying up the remaining goods in other stores about
to go out of business, and emerging as the leading businessmen in the
settlement.
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| Reconstruction of the Lincoln-Berry Store. Photo from the 1933-34 Illinois Blue Book. |
But as with so much in Lincoln’s life, bad luck and failure
stalked him here too. The Berry-Lincoln enterprise “winked out,” in Lincoln’s
words, and then Berry sank into alcoholism and eventually an early grave,
leaving Lincoln alone and virtually penniless once again.
At this moment came a decision that would come to define
Lincoln for the rest of his life. Deep in debt, he eschewed bankruptcy and
determined to repay every penny: an action (“the greatest obstacle I have ever
met”) that would inspire many to attest to his sense of honor and honesty. It
was among the first of many tales about Honest Abe.
Lincoln found work as the New Salem postmaster, then a
deputy county surveyor. He was mentored by the village’s justice of the peace,
and soon began to study law books. In 1834 he tried again for the legislature
and was successful. One of his early triumphs in the legislature was the
successful drive to relocate
the capital city from Vandalia to Springfield. Lincoln soon relocated to
Springfield as well.
The New Salem which Lincoln left behind at the end of the
1830s was a much different place than the one in which he accidentally landed
at the beginning of the decade. By this time it was clear that the dream of
river-bound commerce on the Sangamon was dead; the river presented too many
hazards to navigation to ever be commercially viable; and now the new railroads
were beginning to show potential. By 1840, New Salem was gone as a settlement,
Lincoln’s old neighbors all moved on to other locations. The area was detached
from Sangamon County and made part of the newly-created Menard County, but the
county seat was a few miles up the river at Petersburg.
By the turn of the 20th century, there was
nothing left of New Salem but a few low spots in the ground which had once been
cellars for the cabins of Lincoln and his neighbors. The area was a livestock
pasture in 1906 when it was visited
by famous newspaperman William Randolph Hearst.
Hearst, serving in Congress and contemplating a run for the
presidency, had come to Illinois on his way back from California. He had been
invited to speak at the Old Salem Chautauqua, a large annual gathering in
Menard County near Lincoln’s former home.
Exactly what happened next is not entirely clear. Legend has
it that the family which owned the former New Salem property, the Bales, wanted
to see it become a memorial of some kind for Lincoln, but they also wanted to
ensure that it did not end up as some kind of business enterprise. They met
with the Chautauqua association, who in turn discussed the idea with
Congressman Henry
Rainey. Rainey then made a suggestion to his wealthy colleague, Hearst, who
saw an opportunity to link himself with the nation’s greatest President and
perhaps please some voters in an upcoming Presidential election.
Hearst paid between $11,000 and $12,000 for the property,
and then gifted it to the Chautauqua Association. The announcement was greeted
with “tumultuous applause,” according to the local newspaper, but then things
stalled for more than a decade. No preservation work was done, and no memorial
was built.
In 1917, the Chautauqua Association created the Old Salem
Lincoln League, with the assignment of researching Lincoln’s time in Menard
County. The renewed interest in the site led to its being the location of a
major celebration of the Illinois Centennial. With Hearst’s consent, the land
was donated to the State of Illinois on May 22, 1919. Hearst insisted that it
must always be free to visit.
Some restoration began in the early 1920s. Most dramatically
this restoration involved the return of an entire original New Salem building
which had been picked up and moved to Petersburg decades before. In 1931, one
hundred years after Lincoln’s arrival, the Illinois General Assembly
appropriated $50,000 to begin reconstructing the New Salem village as part of a
state park. Governor Lewis Emmerson directed that the location be formally
named “New
Salem State Park.”
Though the restored village was dedicated by Governor Henry
Horner and the Abraham Lincoln Association on a rainy day in October 1933, construction
continued throughout the decade. In 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps came
in and took over the reconstruction work, building cabins and stores to
resemble as closely as possible the appearance of the village one hundred years
before.
“The State has made an excellent job of the reconstruction,”
wrote Benjamin P. Thomas, Executive Secretary of the Abraham Lincoln
Association. Thomas went on to write that state officials, “spared no effort to
secure historic fidelity in every possible detail,” and that, “every available
scrap of information about the old village was collected.”
Painstaking research was done on the site and on its
inhabitants. Every detail, from the width of the main street to the locations
of the fireplaces within each cabin was carefully studied to create the most
accurate restoration possible. Many of the furnishings were donated by local
residents.
“The people of Menard County and others who have made
contributions deserve high praise for the unselfish generosity with which they
have turned over their treasures to the state,” Thomas wrote. Some of those
treasures were simply from the period of the 1830s, others were traced back to
specific buildings in New Salem itself.
Research continues, part of a seemingly never-ending quest
for historical accuracy at the site, which now contains 700 acres, 23 historic
buildings – homes, shops, stores, a school, a tavern and the mill. The park
also hosts a museum, informational displays and costumed interpreters who bring
the village to life.
Lincoln’s New Salem is open to visitors from 9 a.m. to 5
p.m. seven days a week between May and October, Wednesdays through Sundays from
November to April.