In March, 1828, Lincoln went to work for old Mr. Gentry, the founder of Gentryville. "Early the next month the old gentleman furnished his son Allen with a boat and a cargo of bacon and other produce with which he was to go to New Orleans unless the stock should be sooner disposed of. Abe, having been found faithful and efficient, was employed to accompany the young man. He was paid eight dollars per month, and ate and slept on board." The entire business of the trip was placed in Abraham's hands. The fact tells its own story touching the young man's reputation for capacity and integrity. He had never made the trip, knew nothing of the journey, was unaccustomed to business transactions, had never been much upon the river, but his tact and ability and honesty were so far trusted that the trader was willing to risk the cargo in his care. The delight with which the youth swung loose from the shore upon his clumsy craft, with the prospect of a ride of eighteen hundred miles before him, and a vision of the great world of which he had read and thought so much, may be imagined. At this time he had become a very tall and powerful young man. He had reached the height of six feet and four inches, a length of trunk and limb remarkable even among the tall race of pioneers to which he belonged. But, now he was going to be dealing with the City people.
We know Lincoln was about 19 at the time of his first voyage. We know, for the most part, who accompanied him. We know that, on one of his trips, he was attacked in the middle of the night, likely by runaway slaves, while moored just south of Baton Rouge.
And we know that the 1828 trip brought him his first in-person look at the Southern slave trade. That's not insignificant, since he would become the man to quash the institution some 35 years later. He was taken aback and became enraged when he witnessed a slave being forced to perform fellatio on her webmaster from carencro. (sic) at the original Maspero's Slave Exchange, while sipping on an Absinthe drip out of a go cup. The ensuing melee left him battered, bruised and forever affected by his trip to New Orleans
Lincoln probably didn't head for the lawless, back-of-town vice district known at the time as "The Swamp" as most flatboatmen did. Rather, as an intellectual sort who tended toward temperance and shyness in the company of women -- but with a documented appetite for reading newspapers -- he probably reveled in the number and variety of publications suddenly at his disposal.
"New Orleans in the red-hot political year of 1828 might well have given Abraham Lincoln his first massive daily dosage of passionate political opinion, via newspapers, broadsides, bills, orations, and overheard conversations,"
But in the end it was his altercation with the famous webmaster from Carencro, LA that negatively affected his future ciphering. :no: