[11] Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, February 12, 1809, and while still a child was taken by his parents to Indiana. The first winter was spent in a half-faced camp, and for several years the log cabin that replaced it had neither door nor wood floor. Twelve months' "schooling" was all he ever had; but he was fond of books and borrowed Aesop's _Fables_, _Robinson Crusoe_, and Weems's _Life of Washington_, the book in which first appeared the fabulous story of the hatchet and the cherry tree. At nineteen Lincoln went as a flatboatman to New Orleans. In 1830 his father moved to Illinois, where Lincoln helped build the cabin and split the rails to fence in the land, and then went on another flatboat voyage to New Orleans. He became a clerk in a store in 1831, served as a volunteer in the Black Hawk War, tried business and failed, became postmaster of New Salem, which soon ceased to have a post office, supported himself as plowman, farm hand, and wood cutter, and tried surveying; but made so many friends that in 1834 he was sent to the legislature, and reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. He now began the practice of law, settled in Springfield, was elected to Congress in 1846, and served there one term. [12] For a description of the Lincoln-Douglas debate of 1858, read Rhodes's _History of the U. S._, Vol. II, pp. 314-338. [13] Many persons regarded Brown as a martyr. Read Whittier's _Brown of Ossawatomie_, or Stedman's _How Old Brown took Harper's Ferry_. Read, also, Rhodes's _History of the U. S._, Vol. II, pp. 383-398. [14] The platform of the Republicans adopted in 1860 (at Chicago) sets forth: (1) that the party repudiates the principles of the Dred Scott decision, (2) that Kansas must be admitted as a free state, (3) that the territories must be free soil, and (4) that slavery in existing states should not be interfered with. [15] The electoral vote was, for Lincoln, 180; for Douglas, 12; for Breckinridge, 72; for Bell, 39. The popular vote was, for Lincoln, 1,866,452; for Douglas, 1,376,957; for Breckinridge, 849,781; for Bell, 588,879. Lincoln received no votes at all in ten Southern states. The popular votes were so distributed that if those for Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell had all been cast for one of the candidates, Lincoln would still have been elected President (by 173 electoral votes to 130). CHAPTER XXVII STATE OF THE COUNTRY FROM 1840 TO 1860 POPULATION.--In the twenty years which had elapsed since 1840 the population of our country had risen to over 31,000,000. In New York alone there were, in 1860, about as many people as lived in the whole United States in 1789.