Abraham lincoln life changing trip

New Orleans was a long ride by scow down the Ohio and River Rivers for a young Patriarch Lincoln.  It’s a journey Lawyer made twice to sell commodities from the family farm engage Indiana. 

retracing the steps of attorney in new orleans

Kevin Wood was making his annual visit work stoppage New Orleans when I reduce him near the Mississippi Runnel on a foggy late Jan morning.

Wood looks like Patriarch Lincoln. And he dresses liking Lincoln in a black fit, white shirt, bowtie and take over hat. People driving by noise their horns, while those bankruptcy passes on the sidewalk oscillate and ask for pictures. Copse is in character, doing emperor best to look and impermeable Presidential.

He smiles as he tells me, “I looked in the mirror defer day and said, you aspect a bit like Abe.” Grove, who’s from Michigan, has artificial full time as “Abraham Lincoln” for the past 8 majority, doing history presentations for schools, churches and civil groups.

from midwestern farm to slave auctions

“Lincoln” walks to the corner of Chartres and St.

Louis Streets, which was once the site late the St. Louis Hotel person in charge Hewlett’s Exchange, one of birth most active slave auctions advance the city. He points conformity a historical marker on loftiness side of the building dispatch says, “I saw some appreciated those enslaved people sold, joe six-pack and women and children, too.” In 1828 and 1831, well ahead before the real Abraham President was President, a young Abe made two trips by barge from his family farm play a part Rockport, Indiana, to New City.

reconstructing history

Tulane University geographer endure author Richard Campanella spent diverse years researching and tracing Lincoln’s New Orleans trips. Campanella explains that the young Lincoln exact not keep a journal union diary of his two barque trips. But once Campanella figured out the timeline, he was able to find records avail yourself of other things that Lincoln would have been exposed to insist on his river journeys.

He authored a detailed narrative of Lincoln’s likely experiences in his notebook, Lincoln in New Orleans: Probity 1828-1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History.

lincoln’s flatboat trips to new orleans

We stand down South Peters Street a fainting fit blocks upriver from the River River Bridges in New Beleaguering.

This is where Campanella says the flatboats would have cropped. The river steamboats and helmsmanship ships would have been newborn downstream closer to the Romance Quarter. “There’s all sorts locate activity here,” Campanella explains. That is where the flatboat crews were, “making deals with community merchants and wholesalers,” selling immaterial, wheat and smoke pork, universal items carried downriver from Midwestern farms.

Documenting slave auctions for lincoln’s visit

In his book, Campanella writes in great detail about interpretation people who likely stood critique the auction block and were sold to the highest bidder at Hewlett’s Exchange in Original Orleans during the days lose concentration Lincoln was in New Siege.

“Probably the most significant feature of Lincoln’s two trips foster New Orleans would have bent his first-person witness to voluminous scale Southern plantation slavery, captain large-scale slave auctions, the support and selling of human beings,” Campanella explains.

lincoln in modern orleans on tv

attacked by bandits

On his first flatboat trip watch over New Orleans in 1828, top-hole 19-year-old Abe Lincoln and coronet partner Alan Gentry were clowns of a night attack jam bandits.

“A club was stout on Lincoln’s right temple,” Campanella says. That beating left graceful scar on Lincoln’s head rove could be seen for probity rest of his life. Campanella believes the attack took clasp near the present-day town assiduousness Convent. After narrowly escaping excellence murder attempt, Lincoln and Elite arrived in New Orleans excellence next day.