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Abraham Lincoln 'The Rail Splitter'

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Abraham Lincoln was first called "The Rail Splitter" while running for president in 1860. The image was intended to portray him as a hardworking, frontiersman who wielded an ax to split logs to make rail fences. Lincoln folklore says that Lincoln's use of an ax began early in life. When the Lincoln family moved from Kentucky to Indiana in the autumn of 1816, they first lived in a rough temporary shelter. The following spring a more permanent house had to be built. He was only eight, though he was too young for strenuous manual labor, he was big for his age, and willing to work. By the 1860 election Lincoln wasn’t doing manual labor anymore. He was a prominent lawyer, not a backwoodsman. Still, Lincoln was comfortable with the story of him learning to use an ax as a boy when his campaign biography was being written. He perhaps, recognized that his history of working with an ax could have political advantages. …show more content…

Richard Oglesby was quite familiar with Lincoln's stories of his early life and planned to capitalize on Lincoln’s humble background for political advantage. Oglesby knew Lincoln had worked with his cousin John Hanks, clearing land and making rail fences when the Lincoln family had moved to their new homestead along the Sangamon River. He asked John Hanks to find the location, where the two had felled trees and made fence rails. Hanks said he could, and the next day the two men set off to authentic Lincoln-chopped fence rails. John Hanks inspected a fence, and declared they were the very rails he and Lincoln had cut. Hanks claimed he knew them by the wood, black walnut and honey locust. Oglesby was satisfied he had found rails made by Lincoln, two rails were lashed to the buggy and the men returned to

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