Slave block, St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans, La.

Title: Slave block, St. Louis Hotel, New Orleans, La.
LC Subject: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
Description: Having come of age, Lincoln left the family and “struck out for himself”. He had to “take jobs whenever he could get them”. The first of these carried him again as a flatboat hand to New Orleans. There something happened that made a lasting impression on his soul: he witnessed a slave auction. “His heart bled,” wrote one of his companions; “said nothing much; was silent; looked bad. I can say, knowing it, that it was on this trip that he formed his opinion on slavery. It ran its iron in him then and there, May, 1831. I have heard his say so often.” Then he lived several years at New Salem in Illinois, a small mushroom village, with a mill, some “stores” and whiskey shops, that rose quickly, and soon disappeared again. It was a desolate, disjointed, half-loitering life, without any other aim than to gain food and shelter from day to day. He served as pilot on a steamboat trip, then as clerk in a store and a mill; business failing he was adrift for some time. Being compelled to measure his strength with the chief bully of the neighborhood, and overcoming him, he became a noted person in that muscular community, and won the esteem and friendship of the ruling gang of ruffians to such a degree that, when the Black Hawk war broke out, they elected him, a young man of twenty-three, captain of a volunteer company, composed mainly of roughs of their kind.
Work Type: lantern slides
Location: New Orleans >> Orleans Parish >> Louisiana >> United States
Date: 1915/1925
Identifier: P217:04:63
Rights: No Copyright - United States
Local Collection Name: Visual Instruction Department Lantern Slides, 1900-1940 (P 217)
Type: Image
Format: image/tiff
Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Primary Set: OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center
Is Part Of: Set 8 - Abraham Lincoln
Institution: Oregon State University