After reaching the new home in Illinois, young Lincoln worked with his
father until things were in shape for comfortable living. He helped to
build the log cabin, break up the new land and fence it in, splitting
the rails with his own hands. It was these very rails over which so much
sentiment was expended years afterward at an important epoch in
Lincoln's political career. During the sitting of the State Convention
at Decatur, a banner attached to two of these rails and bearing an
appropriate inscription was brought into the assemblage and formally
presented to that body amid a scene of unparalleled enthusiasm. After
that they were in demand in every State of the Union in which free labor
was honored. They were borne in processions by the people, and hailed by
hundreds of thousands as a symbol of triumph and a glorious vindication
of freedom and of the right and dignity of labor. These, however, were
not the first rails made by Lincoln. He was a practiced hand at the
business. As a memento of his pioneer accomplishment he preserved in
later years a cane made from a rail which he had split on his father's
farm.

The next important record of Lincoln's career connects him with Mr.
Denton Offutt. The circumstances which brought him into this relation
are thus narrated by Mr. J.H. Barrett: "While there was snow on the
ground, at the close of the year 1830, or early in 1831, a man came to
that part of Macon County where young Lincoln was living, in pursuit of
hands to aid him in a flatboat voyage down the Mississippi. The fact was
known that the youth had once made such a trip, and his services were
sought for this occasion. As one who had his own subsistence to earn,
with no capital but his hands, he accepted the proposition made him.
Perhaps there was something of his inherited and acquired fondness for
exciting adventure impelling him to this decision. With him were also