By Daniel Worthington and Christopher Wills

When you hear that Abraham Lincoln ran up $1,100 in debt as a young man, it sounds bad but not that bad. Like, “Everyone makes mistakes, so be more responsible next time, Abraham.” Then you remember that this was frontier Illinois in 1835, when cash was scarce and wages for an uneducated farm boy were almost zero.

What could that $1,100 have bought Lincoln back then? It was roughly the equivalent of 110 cows or 3,300 bushels of corn. He could have gotten more than a thousand acres of land. He could have rented a room for 21 years.

It’s even more amazing when you think of it in terms of wages. This was a place and time where a laborer might get a dollar a day. As a part-time postmaster, Lincoln earned about $55 a year. An Army blacksmith made just $120 a year. That $1,100 debt was the equivalent of $800,000 in wages today. (Our price comparisons come from a variety of lists found here. The equivalent wage figure is from the economics website MeasuringWorth.com.)

How does a 26-year-old get that deep in debt? Well, it wasn’t easy.

First, Lincoln bought a half-interest in a general store in little New Salem in 1832, but he did it on credit. The seller basically said, “Here, take my half of the store and pay me back later.” Lincoln was now a shopkeeper with a partner named William Berry. A few months later, the partners bought another store’s building and contents. They paid $265 in cash plus a horse and assumed debts of $377. So now Lincoln owed money for the first purchase and he owed half of $377 for the second purchase.

New Salem during Lincoln's era. The second Lincoln-Berry store is circled in red. (Library of Congress)