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拍品專文
A presentation piece from the Election of 1860.
Although Lincoln in his youth was a prodigious farm laborer, and known for his ability to split rails with seemingly great ease, the nickname "the Rail-splitter," was not associated with him until 1860. Both Richard J. Oglesby (later governor of Illinois), and Lincoln's mother's first cousin, John Hanks, took credit for the idea. According to one account, Oglesby "'had conceived the idea of presenting Lincoln as the representative candidate of free labor, the exponent of the possibilities for a poor man in a free state. Recalling the successful Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign of 1840, he determined to find some one thing in Mr. Lincoln's unsuccessful career as a worker that could be made the emblem of that idea, and a catch word which would make enthusiastic the working people."1
Together they located a clearing near Decatur, Illinois that Lincoln and Hanks had cleared with Lincoln in 1830, and the pair dragged two fence rails that the future president had split there soon after his family arrived in Illinois. The fence rails became the centerpiece of the Republican state convention held in Decatur to organize the delegation to attend the national convention in Chicago. To promote Lincoln, Hanks and another man, paraded the rails on the convention floor that now bore an inscription that read: "ABRAHAM LINCOLN The Rail Candidate FOR PRESIDENT IN 1860. – Two rails made of 3,000 made in 1830 by Thos. Hanks and Abe Lincoln—whose father was the first pioneer of Macon County." The effect was electric and the assembled delegates stampeded for Lincoln. At the close of the convention, Hanks sold the two rails for a good price, and then brought back another wagon load and began selling them for a dollar a piece.
Four days after the convention at Decatur closed, Republican delegates from across the country descended upon Chicago for the National Convention. The Illinois delegation enthusiastically extolled the virtues of "The Rail Splitter." After Lincoln's nomination on the third ballot, Rail Splitter Clubs began to be organized throughout the north, and the demand for the old fence rails that Lincoln had split three decades earlier skyrocketed. Many of those rails were turned into canes much like the present example—and with them—a political legend was born.
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1 Quoted in Wayne C. Temple, "Lincoln's Fence Rails," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring 1954), 23.
Although Lincoln in his youth was a prodigious farm laborer, and known for his ability to split rails with seemingly great ease, the nickname "the Rail-splitter," was not associated with him until 1860. Both Richard J. Oglesby (later governor of Illinois), and Lincoln's mother's first cousin, John Hanks, took credit for the idea. According to one account, Oglesby "'had conceived the idea of presenting Lincoln as the representative candidate of free labor, the exponent of the possibilities for a poor man in a free state. Recalling the successful Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign of 1840, he determined to find some one thing in Mr. Lincoln's unsuccessful career as a worker that could be made the emblem of that idea, and a catch word which would make enthusiastic the working people."1
Together they located a clearing near Decatur, Illinois that Lincoln and Hanks had cleared with Lincoln in 1830, and the pair dragged two fence rails that the future president had split there soon after his family arrived in Illinois. The fence rails became the centerpiece of the Republican state convention held in Decatur to organize the delegation to attend the national convention in Chicago. To promote Lincoln, Hanks and another man, paraded the rails on the convention floor that now bore an inscription that read: "ABRAHAM LINCOLN The Rail Candidate FOR PRESIDENT IN 1860. – Two rails made of 3,000 made in 1830 by Thos. Hanks and Abe Lincoln—whose father was the first pioneer of Macon County." The effect was electric and the assembled delegates stampeded for Lincoln. At the close of the convention, Hanks sold the two rails for a good price, and then brought back another wagon load and began selling them for a dollar a piece.
Four days after the convention at Decatur closed, Republican delegates from across the country descended upon Chicago for the National Convention. The Illinois delegation enthusiastically extolled the virtues of "The Rail Splitter." After Lincoln's nomination on the third ballot, Rail Splitter Clubs began to be organized throughout the north, and the demand for the old fence rails that Lincoln had split three decades earlier skyrocketed. Many of those rails were turned into canes much like the present example—and with them—a political legend was born.
________________
1 Quoted in Wayne C. Temple, "Lincoln's Fence Rails," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring 1954), 23.