In 1828, nineteen-year-old Abraham Lincoln and neighbor Allen Gentry made what was the first of Lincoln’s two flatboat trips to New Orleans. Gentry’s father funded the trip. A typical investment required about $75 (over $2000 today) for the flatboat alone. The cargo could be worth over $3000 ($82,000 today). A successful trip could be immensely profitable; an unsuccessful one financially devastating.
Building the flatboat was the first chore. Unlike keelboats, which were long and narrow with a central ridge keel under the hull to maintain stability and easy steering, flatboats were entirely flat on the bottom like a raft. They had simple square sides, with angled bow and stern. They could range from fifteen to thirty feet wide and from forty to 120 feet long. Lengthy oars called sweeps extended from the sides for stability. In the back was a wide bladed steering oar; in the front an oar called a gouger to throw the boat in any direction to avoid snags, trees, and stumps.
While that sounds simple, Gentry and Lincoln had to use their full extent of “woods craft” knowledge learned felling forests and building log cabins. One circuit riding colleague of Lincoln described the basic construction of the flatboat for that era:
Two flat pieces of timber from thirty to fifty feet in length, two to three feet in breadth, and foot in thickness were hewed out of poplar log; one edge was level, the other two were beveled at each end. These pieces were called gunwales— pronounced gunnels. Into these gunwales, at suitable distances, were mortised cross-pieces of oak, fourteen feet long, six inches wide, and three inches thick, in addition to head blocks at each end, six- or eight-inches square. A stout frame being thus made, two-inch oak planks were fastened longitudinally to the oak cross-pieces by means of wooden pins an inch square, systematically cut out from tough species of timber termed “pin oak,” and driven by a heavy maul through an auger hole bored through both planks. The bottom, consisting of two-inch oak plank, was then fastened on to these longitudinal planks and rabbeted into the gunwales, the same being made water-tight by oakum and pitch. Thus far, no iron was used in the construction, and no iron tools employed beyond crosscut saw, mill saw, an axe, broad-axe, an augur, and a draw-knife.
This boat was launched by simply turning it over by two windlasses and levers so as to lie bottom side down in the river. Uprights consisting of 4 x 4 scantling were then mortised into the upper edge of the gunwales, and one-and-one-half-inch poplar plank securely fastened longitudinally thereon, and the seams caulked with oakum, and pitched. When produce was to be her cargo, a false bottom was put in, as it was impossible to construct such boats so that they would be entirely water-tight. Finally, a ridge-pole was placed longitudinally, and a roof was added. A cabin was improvised in one corner by the use of rough boards, and four huge oars were rigged, two on the sides, one at the bow, and one at the stern. A “check post” and coil of rope were then provided, and the craft was in commission.
A small woodstove was installed for cooking. Because Lincoln and Gentry were its sole crew, their flatboat was probably about eighteen feet wide and sixty-five feet long, and they likely omitted the side sweeps, controlling the boat solely with the steering and gouger oars.
This deceptively simple boat provided a significant showcase of construction and navigation. Lincoln and Gentry had to consider structural stresses on the frame to avoid any twisting that might open up leaks between the boards. Flipping the hull into the water required an understanding of leverage and windlass, the latter being a rudimentary block and tackle, perhaps even a rope thrown over a tree branch or wooden frame. When a boat had them, sweeps needed to be almost twice as wide as the width of the hull in order to create enough physical force against the water to maintain positioning in the river. The gouger must be strong and thick enough to jab into shallow mud to jolt the flatboat to the side when necessary. Like the steering oar at the stern, the gouger required almost superhuman strength to ensure boat stability and direction. Lincoln and Gentry would use both their brains and their brawn throughout the voyage.
Most likely the two men departed Rockport in the spring to take advantage of high waters. The winter of 1828 had been rather mild, with an early spring bringing rapid tree growth. Corn crops were already beginning to grow in Louisiana. With the Ohio River cresting over its banks, the high waters offered smoother and faster sailing to the Mississippi River and on to New Orleans. The two men loaded the flatboat with James Gentry’s cargo, which included corn and hay for the mules on sugar plantations and meat and potatoes for the enslaved workers. They also likely carried “barrel pork,” a preserved pork similar to bacon that Southern planters preferred as a low-cost, high-energy food for slaves. Since much of the sugar was grown north of New Orleans in places like Natchez, Mississippi and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the two men likely made several stops to sell their wares or barter for products they could sell further downstream, including cotton, tobacco, and sugar. The flatboat was well-battered by floating debris by the time they reached New Orleans about 1,300 miles distant. Once there, Lincoln and Gentry lingered long enough to sell their remaining stock before the flatboat was sold off to be taken apart for building houses, repairing docks, or fueling the boilers of steamboats. The two men then took a steamboat back to Rockport, Indiana.
[Adapted from Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America]
[Photo credit: Flatboat display outside New Salem, IL taken by David J. Kent]
Coming in February 2026: Unable to Escape This Toil
Available now – Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.
You also follow my author page on Facebook.
David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
On April 10, 1861, two days before the Confederacy opened fire on Fort Sumter, Ambrose W. Thompson met with Lincoln to gain support for a coal mining project in the Chiriqui region of the Granadian Confederation (now Panama near the border with Costa Rica). Thompson headed a corporation that had been created to provide coal to the U.S. Navy. Lincoln again relied on Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry for scientific advice. Henry wrote to John Peter Lesley, one of the leading geologists in the United States and an expert on coal. In his confidential letter he said he was writing on behalf of President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward to get Lesley’s opinion on the value of the coal deposit in the Chiriqui district. Interest in the coal was two-fold. It was needed for coal-fired boilers for steam ships and railroad locomotives, but it also offered itself as a possible solution to the likely emancipation of enslaved people. Lincoln and others had hoped that freed slaves (and other free blacks) could be relocated to avoid the problems of a racially mixed society. Should the Chiriqui coal be viable, it could serve as an economic basis for such a colony. Henry asked Lesley to give him “in addition to your opinion derived from general scientific principles any reliable information you may possess relative to this matter.”
The dean of all Abraham Lincoln scholars passed away on March 31, 2025. He was 101. Wayne Calhoun Temple, known to everyone as “Doc,” celebrated his 101st birthday on February 5th.
Abraham Lincoln stood at the podium in the U.S. House of Representative chambers on July 27, 1848. His topic – the presidential question. Notwithstanding the negative reaction to his previous “spot resolutions” speech, Lincoln was still considered an effective speaker and thus was called upon to help convince people that Zachary Taylor was the correct choice as the Whig nominee for president. Lincoln had strongly supported the nomination of Taylor over the aging Henry Clay, previously Lincoln’s beau ideal of a statesman. He even spoke at the nominating convention in favor of Taylor.
Join me and author Michael Vorenberg on Thursday, March 13, 2025, for the White House Historical Association’s History Happy Hour. The program is free and begins at 6 pm ET. 
The Annual Abraham Lincoln Institute (ALI) Symposium is set for March 22, 2025, at historic Ford’s Theatre in downtown Washington, DC. The full day program starts at 9 am and runs to 5 pm.
In February 1860, the western-bred Abraham Lincoln must have been astonished by the hustle and bustle around lower New York City. Having crossed the Hudson River from Jersey City to Manhattan, Lincoln made his way to the Astor House, one of most luxurious hotels in New York City, conveniently located near City Hall and Publishers Row (aka, Newspaper Row or Printing House Square) housing the city’s most important newspapers. New York City had grown by over fifty percent just in the last decade, many of whom were immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and other European nations. If Lincoln’s room was on the ground floor of the Astor House, he would have looked out on St. Paul’s Chapel, built in 1766 and where George Washington attended services immediately after taking the oath of office as the first president of the United States. No doubt Lincoln would have looked into the chapel. Today, from a vantage point on Broadway, you can see the new One World Trade Center looming behind the Chapel’s historic spire. From the other side, standing in the burying ground facing the skyscraper, is a “Bell of Hope” rung every year on September 11 to reflect both the mourning of that day and the Chapel’s role as a refuge during that warm, clear cataclysmic day in 2001.
While Abraham Lincoln had a well-deserved reputation as a soft touch during the Civil War, readily finding excuses to offer mercy to Union soldiers who had fallen asleep or abandoned their posts, he also approved the hanging of the only slave trader ever to be executed by the United States. Captain Nathaniel Gordon was a repeat offender, caught with nearly 900 enslaved men, women, and children crammed into the tiny space below decks off the coast of Congo. But Gordon wasn’t particularly worried. For the first 40+ years of the law that made international slave trading illegal and punishable by death, no man was ever executed. Why now? And why by Lincoln?
