Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) was ordained by the famous Methodist circuit-riding preacher Rev. Francis Asbury and Rev. William McKendree, who fought in the Siege of Yorktown during the Revolutionary War.
Cartwright helped found McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois, the oldest college in Illinois.
Cartwright served as a chaplain during the War of 1812.
He was one of the most famous Methodist camp meeting evangelists during the Second Great Awakening Revival.
As a circuit-riding minister, he preached nearly 15,000 sermons and baptized almost 12,000 converts.
Peter Cartwright planted churches in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Illinois.
He helped found Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL, and MacMurry College in Jacksonville, IL, one of the oldest institutions of higher learning for women in America.
In recalling his own conversion, Peter Cartwright shared:"I went with weeping multitudes and bowed before the preaching stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy. In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was made upon my mind, as though a voice said to me: 'Thy sins are all forgiven thee.'"
In 1824, Peter Cartwright left Kentucky and Tennessee because of his disdain for slavery, and moved to Illinois, where he was elected to the Illinois General Assembly in 1828.
In 1832, Cartwright was re-elected, defeating a 23-year-old candidate who was a store clerk and rail splitter in New Salem, Illinois -- Abraham Lincoln.
In 1846, Peter Cartwright ran for the U.S. Congress, but this time, was defeated by Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln's parents, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, were Regular and Primitive Baptists in Kentucky, described as attending frontier outdoor revival camp meetings.
This gives background to Abraham's remark (Scribner's Monthly, December, 1881,"The Lincoln Life - Mask and How It Was Made"):
"I don't like to hear cut and dried sermons. No—when I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees."
Lincoln's parents were married in 1806, in a log cabin near Springfield, Kentucky.
The ceremony was performed by Methodist minister Reverend Jesse Head, president of Springfield's municipal Board of Trustees.
Abraham Lincoln was born in February 12, 1809, and grew up on the Kentucky frontier.
His family moved to Indiana in 1816, where they joined Pigeon Creek Baptist Church, even helping to build the log meeting house.
In 1818, when he was 9 years old, his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln died.
A year later, his father married Sarah Bush Johnston, whom Abe called "Mother."
In 1825, at age 16, he worked as a ferryboat operator on the Anderson River where it empties into the Ohio River.
He made his own rowboat to take passengers to the middle of the Ohio River where they could board passing steamboats.
In 1828, he and his friend Allen Gentry took a cargo flatboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
Witnessing a slave auction, Lincoln reportedly said, “If I ever get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I’ll hit it hard.”
Being self-educated, he read and reread the:
- King James Bible,
- Aesop's Fables,
- John Bunyan's The Pilgrims Progress,
- Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe,
- Mason Locke Weems' The Life of Washington, and
- The Autobiography of Ben Franklin.
In 1830, his family moved west of Decatur, Illinois.
He moved further west to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked as a store clerk.
There, Lincoln fell in love with Ann Rutledge, but was heartbroken when she died of a fever that swept through town.
He served as a captain in the Black Hawk War of 1832.
Studying Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries of the Laws of England, he became a lawyer in 1836.
Lincoln served 8 years in the Illinois General Assembly.
In 1840, he began courting Mary Todd.
They became engaged and scheduled the wedding in 1841, but Lincoln called it off at the last minute.
A year later, they reconciled and married in Springfield, Illinois.
Together, they had four children, though sadly only one lived to reach adulthood.
In 1841, Lincoln visited his friend Joshua Speed on his Farmington plantation.
On his return trip, he saw slaves on the Louisville waterfront being sold down river to the Democrat South.
Lincoln described in a letter to Joshua’s half-sister Mary:
“They were chained six and six together. A small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each ... So that the Negroes were strung together precisely like so many fish on a trot-line.”
Lincoln wrote to Joshua Speed in August 24, 1855:
"You know I dislike slavery ... I hate to see (them) hunted down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes, and unrewarded toils ...
In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a 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 continued torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border.
It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable."
Lincoln was elected as a Whig candidate to the U.S. Congress, serving 1847-1849.
He was befriended by the anti-slavery Congressman and former U.S. President John Quincy Adams.
Lincoln was present when the 81-year-old Adams collapsed on the floor of Congress.
Lincoln served as one of the pall-bearers at Adams' funeral in 1848.
After just one term in Congress, Lincoln returned to practicing law.
When the Republican Party was started in 1854, Lincoln stood against Democrats who wanted to expand slavery into western territories acquired after the Mexican-American War.
He gained national prominence by debating Stephen Douglas for the U.S. Senate in 1858.
He was nominated as the Republican candidate for President, and won in 1860.
"At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad.
If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Lincoln stated at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 11, 1858:
"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?
It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our army and our navy. These are not our reliance against tyranny. All of those may be turned against us ...
Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prized liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere.
Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors ... you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."
Lincoln wrote to William Dodge, February 23, 1861:
"Freedom is the natural condition of the human race, in which the Almighty intended men to live. Those who fight the purpose of the Almighty will not succeed."
Reflecting on the slavery in the Southern Democrat states, Lincoln wrote to H.L. Pierce on April 6, 1859:
"This is a world of compensation ... Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God, cannot long retain it."
Lincoln's words were echoed later by President Ronald Reagan, who wrote in "Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation" (The Human Life Review, 1983):
"Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should be slaves ...
Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion."
Lincoln countered Stephen A. Douglas, September 18, 1858:
"Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefish, a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."
Lincoln remarked in a debate with Judge Douglas, October 7, 1858:
"Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a right to have it but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong."
Lincoln stated in a debate with Douglas, October 7, 1858:
"I suppose the real difference between Judge Douglas and his friends and the Republicans, on the contrary, is that the Judge is not in favor of making any difference between slavery and liberty."
In a debate with Douglas, October 13, 1858, Lincoln stated:
"There is a sentiment in the country contrary to me -- a sentiment which holds that slavery is not wrong ... that policy is the Democratic policy ...
The difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and those who do not think it wrong.
The Republican party think it wrong -- we think it is a moral, a social and a political wrong."
Lincoln closed a debate with Judge Douglas, 1858:
"That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent.
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles -- right and wrong -- throughout the world.
They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle."
"If the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made ... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers."
Abraham Lincoln addressed the question as to whether the courts are masters over the people, or are the people masters over the courts (The Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas, published 1897):
"The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both Congresses and Courts."
Thomas Jefferson made a similar statement to William Johnson in 1823:
"But the Chief Justice says, 'There must be an ultimate arbiter (umpire) somewhere.' True, there must ... The ultimate arbiter is the people."
Lincoln stated at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861:
"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who ... adopted that Declaration of Independence --
I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army ... I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together.
It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.
It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance ..."
He continued:
"This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence.
Now, my friends, can this country be saved? ...
If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful.
But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle ... I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it."
On February 11, 1861, newly elected as President, Abraham Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois for Washington, D.C., never to return. He stated:
"I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.
Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.
Trusting in Him who can go with me and remain with you, and be everywhere for good ...
Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now."
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate.
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Image credits: Public domain, Methodist clergyman Peter Cartwright, A Youth's History of Kentucky for School and General Reading by Ed Porter Thompson (1897), Unknown author; Public domain; Abraham Lincoln; Description: Scholars and enthusiasts alike believe this portrait of Abraham Lincoln, taken on November 8, 1863, eleven days before his famed Gettysburg Address, to be the best photograph of him ever taken. Lincoln’s character was notoriously difficult to capture in pictures, but Alexander Gardner’s close-up portrait, quite innovative in contrast to the typical full-length portrait style, comes closest to preserving the expressive contours of Lincoln’s face and his penetrating gaze; Artist: Alexander Gardner (1821–1882) Blue pencil.svg wikidata: Q661176; Author: Moses Parker Rice (1839-1925), possibly one of Gardner’s former assistants, copyrighted this portrait in the late nineteenth century, along with other photographs by Gardner; Medium: matte collodion print; Dimensions: height 32.7 cm (12.8 in), width 25.2 cm (9.9 in); Collection: Mead Art Museum, Blue pencil.svg wikidata: Q6803132; Source/Photographer: museums.fivecolleges.edu; Other versions http://www.physical-lincoln.com/exposure/o77; Public domain: Stephen A. Douglas (1813-61) (b/w photo); Unknown date; Bridgeman Images; Author unattributed
Thank You so much for reminding us of our history. I pray your work impacts America.
SUCH A TOWERING FIGURE – - in stature , in determination to see justice done unto all,….. t, y, Bill for doing a proper report on Lincoln’s foremost lifelong principle of ‘All Men are Created Equal’ ….. …..blessings
I feel the same Jacob…help us today, Lord.
I was blest by getting to read that bit of history and how our former Presidents carried the burden of government, by faith
I was blest by getting to read that bit of history and how our former Presidents carried the burden of government, by faith