6. He personally fought with river pirates to defend his cargo
In the days before the railroads, shipping cargoes overland by wagon was slow, subject to weather, across roads which were little more than mud trails. A far more economically feasible method was by water, down the tributaries of the Mississippi and thence to New Orleans. The traffic on the river and the remote nature of the journey led to gangs of thieves forming – river pirates – many of whom adopted the attitude of their seafaring brethren that dead men tell no tales. In 1828 a nineteen year old Lincoln and a partner, Allen Gentry, journeyed down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and New Orleans, carrying a load of goods provided by Gentry’s father, an Indiana storekeeper. During the journey the two men were attacked by a gang of pirates, all black, intent on stealing their cargo.
Using boat poles, clubs, firearms, and fists, Lincoln and Gentry defended their boat and cargo, preventing the pirates from coming aboard as they continued downstream. After several failed attacks, and undoubtedly with more than one throbbing head, the pirates gave up and returned to their lair to await a less belligerent victim. Lincoln and Gentry reached New Orleans, sold their cargo, and for the first time Abraham Lincoln explored a city of the old south, witnessed a slave auction, and returned to his home in Indiana by steamboat. On a second trip to New Orleans in 1831, Lincoln experienced the hazards of navigation on the Mississippi caused by obstructions, which led him to invent a method for floating vessels over shoals using inflatable bladders, for which he eventually was awarded a patent.