Abraham Lincoln's desire to learn and his efforts to educate himself have become legendary. What's less known is that because he grew up in poverty in Kentucky and Indiana, Lincoln had little formal education -- only about 18 months -- and minimal access to books. As a boy, he would often read at night by the light of the fire in his family's cabin. When his father could spare him from chores, Lincoln attended an ABC school. Such schools were held in log cabins, and often the teachers were barely more educated than their pupils. According to Lincoln, "No qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writin' and cipherin', to the Rule of Three."

In 1831, Abraham Lincoln and two others were hired to take a flatboat full of cargo down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, La. Denton Offutt, a Kentucky trader and speculator, paid them 50 cents a day plus a $60 fee. According to popular legend, Lincoln saw his first slave auction while on this trip. Referring to the practice of slavery, he is said to have declared at the time, "If I ever get a chance to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard."

 

In 1858, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln battled it out in a series of debates to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. When Douglas was told that Lincoln was his opponent, he said, "I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of the party -- full of wit, facts, dates -- and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West." Douglas defended popular sovereignty and accused Lincoln of trying to divide the nation. To Lincoln, however, slavery was both a political and a moral issue, and was incompatible with American democracy. In the debate at Freeport, Lincoln cornered Douglas by asking whether the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery prior to the formation of a state constitution. Douglas replied that slavery could be excluded from a territory, despite the Dred Scott decision, if the people refused to enact the necessary local laws for its protection. This opinion, known as the Freeport Doctrine, cost Douglas much of his support among Southern Democrats who were thinking of him as a presidential candidate in 1860. Though Lincoln lost the election, these debates with Douglas brought Lincoln national recognition.