Monday, February 16, 2026
There's a reason he's on the five dollar bill. Some interesting early history...
The 22-year-old Lincoln had arrived, as he would often say, like “a piece of floating driftwood” in the village of New Salem, in Sangamon County, in the summer of 1831. He described himself as “a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month.” New Salem had existed for barely three years and had a population of about 100, a handful of whom had attended college. It was the most civilized and populous place Lincoln had ever lived.
Some days after Lincoln floated into town, New Salem was holding elections. Local civic leaders, discovering that Lincoln could write—a prized ability in those parts—put him to work as a recording clerk registering ballots. In the course of a leisurely afternoon, as citizens came into the voting place, the election judge calling out their votes and the clerk writing them down, townsmen became familiar with another Lincoln ability—as a spell-binding storyteller. He told his lizard story that day, about how an old line Baptist preacher in the Indiana backwoods, delivering a sermon, had the misfortune to have a little blue lizard run up inside his pantaloons, with results that caused some distress among the faithful.
In coming weeks and months—Lincoln now “a sort of Clerk in a store,” as he put it—New Salemites saw more of his storytelling as well as his affability, surprising gentleness, hard work, an unequalled determination and capacity to learn, honesty that immediately became legendary, and prodigious physical strength. This last led Lincoln’s impulsive employer to wager that Lincoln was not only the smartest fellow around but could outwrestle the toughest man in the county—Jack Armstrong, leader of the Clary Grove boys. That wild bunch lived a few miles outside town and were, despite their roguish gallantry, “a terror to the entire region,” as Lincoln’s future law partner William Herndon reports. In his warm description,
They were friendly and good-natured; they could trench a pond, dig a bog, build a house; they could pray and fight, make a village or create a state. They would do almost anything for sport or fun, love or necessity. Though rude and rough…there never was under the sun a more generous parcel of rowdies.
The Clary Grove boys put their money on Armstrong to prove himself “a better man than Lincoln.” Accounts of the epic match vary. Herndon records that it ended when Lincoln, angered by foul play, suspended decorum and “fairly lifted the great bully by the throat and shook him like a rag.” However it ended, all accounts agree on the result: Lincoln increased his good standing in the opinion of “all New Salem,” and “secured the respectful admiration and friendship,” above all, of the Clary Grove champion, Jack Armstrong. (Many years later, Lincoln would, for no fee, skillfully and successfully defend Armstrong’s son against a charge of murder.) The Clary Grove boys were devoted friends and supporters of Lincoln ever after.
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