Preserving the Land for His Mother's Financial Well-Being

One of the reasons Lincoln purchased forty acres of his father's farm was to provide for his aging parents for life. In Lincoln's mind, his stepbrother John D. Johnston and others took advantage of his parents through financial speculation, his idleness condemning his life in Coles County to a life of financial struggle. One month after Thomas Lincoln died on January 17, 1851, Abraham Lincoln conveyed his interest in the west eighty acres to Johnston for a nominal consideration, subject of course to his stepmother's dower right. Shortly thereafter, Johnston made plans to sell the land and move to Missouri in search of new environs and quick riches. Lincoln, deeply rooted in Illinois and quite concerned for his stepmother's wellbeing, wrote his stepbrother and quite heavy-handedly communicated his frustrations with Johnston's apparent shiftlessness.

"When I came to Charleston day before yesterday, I learned that you are anxious to sell the land where you live and move to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever since, and can not but think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn, and wheat, and oats without work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work, you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year, and what you really want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it part with the land you have, and my life upon it, you will never after, own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half you will get for the land, you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you eat drink, and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now I feel it my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, and particularly on Mother's account. The eastern forty acres I intend to keep for Mother while she lives if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her-at least it will rent for something. Her Dower in the other two forties she can let you have, and no thanks to me. Now do not misunderstand this letter: I do not write it in any unkindness. I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face the truth which truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away all your time. Your thousand pretences for not getting along better are all non-sense they deceive nobody but yourself. Go to work is the only cure for your case."

Johnston ignored Lincoln's advice. He convinced Sarah Bush Lincoln to relinquish her dower right. On August 12, 1851, Abraham Lincoln sold the 80-acre Goosenest Prairie Farm he had just inherited from his father to his stepbrother for one dollar. On November 27, Johnston turned around and sold the property to John J. Hall, Sarah Lincoln's grandson, for $250. Even after receiving Lincoln's letter, Johnston continued to try to get Lincoln to allow him to sell the "Lincoln Family Farm," even though he had no title to it. Lincoln, fiercely protecting his mother's interests, communicated clearly to Johnston what he thought of his plan:

"Your proposal about selling the east forty acres of land is all that I want or could claim for myself; but I am not satisfied with it on Mother's account. I want her to have her living, and I feel that it is my duty, to some extent, to see that she is not wronged. She had a right of dower (that is, the use of one-third for life) in the other two forties; but, it seems, she has already let you take that, hook and line. She now has the use of the whole of the East forty, as long as she lives; and if it be sold, of course, she is entitled to the interest on all the money it brings, as long as she lives; but you propose to sell it for three hundred dollars, take one hundred away with you, and leave her two hundred, at 8 per cent, making her the enormous sum of 16 dollars a year. Now, if you are satisfied with treating her in that way, I am not. It is true, that you are to have that forty for two hundred dollars, at Mother's death; but you are not to have it before. I am confident that land can be made to produce for Mother, at least $30 a year, and I can not, to oblige any living person, consent that she shall be put on an allowance of sixteen dollars a year."

In February of 1852, after selling the bulk of Thomas Lincoln's farm to John J. Hall, Johnston migrated to Marion County, Arkansas in the Ozarks. He stayed only one year, before returning to Coles County where he died on April 1, 1854. His life became for Abraham Lincoln a testament to the dangers of idleness and financial speculation.