Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [Illustration: THE EARLIEST PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.—HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED. From a carbon enlargement, by Sherman and McHugh, New York, of a daguerreotype in the possession of the Hon. Robert T. Lincoln, and first published in the MCCLURE’S Life of Lincoln. It is generally believed that Lincoln was not over thirty-five years old when this daguerreotype was taken, and it is certainly true that it shows the face of Lincoln as a young man. It is probably earlier by six or seven years, at least, than any other existing portrait of Lincoln. ] THE EARLY LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN CONTAINING MANY UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS AND UNPUBLISHED REMINISCENCES OF LINCOLN’S EARLY FRIENDS BY IDA M. TARBELL ASSISTED BY J. McCAN DAVIS WITH 160 ILLUSTRATIONS, INCLUDING 20 PORTRAITS OF LINCOLN NEW YORK S. S. McCLURE, LIMITED LONDON 1896 [_All rights reserved_] COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY S. S. MCCLURE, LIMITED COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY S. S. MCCLURE, LIMITED Press of J. J. Little & Co. Astor Place, New York ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTRODUCTION. It has been only within the last ten years that the descent of Abraham Lincoln from the Lincolns of Hingham, Massachusetts, has been established with any degree of certainty. The satisfactory proof of his lineage is a matter of great importance. In a way it explains Lincoln. It shows that he came of a family endowed with the spirit of adventure, of daring, of patriotism, and of thrift; that his ancestors were men who for nearly two hundred years before he was born were active and well-to-do citizens of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Virginia, men who everywhere played their parts well. Abraham Lincoln was but the flowering of generations of upright, honorable men.