steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well
do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were on board
ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a
continual torment to me, and I see something like it every time I
touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not fair for you to
assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually
exercises, the power of making me miserable."

There have been several ingenious attempts to show the origin and
occasion of Mr. Lincoln's antislavery convictions. They seem to us an
idle waste of labor. These sentiments came with the first awakening of
his mind and conscience, and were roused into active life and energy
by the sight of fellow-creatures in chains on an Ohio River steamboat,
and on the wharf at New Orleans.

The party went up the river in the early summer and separated in St.
Louis. Abraham walked in company with John Johnston from St. Louis to
Coles County, and spent a few weeks there with his father, who had
made another migration the year before. His final move was to Goose
Nest Prairie, where he died in 1851, [Footnote: His grave, a mile and
a half west of the town of Farmington, Illinois, is surmounted by an
appropriate monument erected by his grandson, the Hon. Robert T.
Lincoln.] at the age of seventy-three years, after a life which,
though not successful in any material or worldly point of view, was
probably far happier than that of his illustrious son, being unvexed
by enterprise or ambition. Abraham never lost sight of his parents. He
continued to aid and befriend them in every way, even when he could
ill afford it, and when his benefactions were imprudently used. He not
only comforted their declining years with every aid his affection
could suggest, but he did everything in his power to assist his