The Scar in Abraham Lincoln’s hair-line :

Errata Sheet for NANCE: Trials of the First Slave Freed by A. Lincoln :

         The author made a grievous error of omission by not including this as      footnote # 15 on page 47 after the description of the riverboat attack as evidence Lincoln had a life long hatred of slavery after being club on the head with it.   At first he probably hated the slaves, but with contemplation and maturity it turned to a hatred of slavery as the root cause of the assault.  He could not see the scar without the aid of a mirror, yet 21 years after the incident, the scar still bothered him enough that he could part his hair and show it to his new friend, Mr. Swett.

REMINISCENSES of ABRAHAM LINCOLN by DISTINGUISHED MEN OF HIS TIME

Allen Thorndike Rice, Editor, North American Review, 6th Edition, NY, 1888

page 461-462 by Leonard Swett, Ch. XXVI as told by Lincoln in the Fall of 1849

in a small country hotel in Mt. Pulaski, Illinois.

“On the occasion of one of these passages [river boat in the fall of 1828]

in the vicinity of Natchez, a negro came very near smashing the head of the future emancipator of his race.  The boat one night was tied up to the shore and the crew asleep below.  A noise being heard Captain Lincoln came up, and just as his head emerged through the hatchway, a negro, who was pilfering struck him a blow with a heavy stick, but the point of the stick reached over his head and struck the floor beyond, at the same time, thus lightening the blow on his head, but making a scar which he wore always and which he showed me at the time of telling this story.”

--Leonard Swett, after his return from the Mexican War