Abraham Lincoln's Ohio Mound Tour

Abraham Lincoln's Ohio Mound Tour

    In December of 1848, Abraham Lincoln returned to Washington D.C. from Springfield. He took a boat to the Cahokia Mounds and then to Portsmouth, Ohio where he arranged to stay with an abolitionist family in Sargents Station, north of Portsmouth. Earlier that year Squire and Davis had published," Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," that was distributed to members of Congress. 
   Abraham Lincoln visited the Portsmouth Earthwork Complex, probably stopping at the Tremper Effigy Mound and the Seal Township earthworks that were located in front of the house of the Barnes family in Sargents Station. 

In 1848 the axis-mundi of the sacred vias was still visible with a large burial mound to the west of the horseshoe-shaped works.  It is not known of Lincoln ferried across the Ohio River to Kentucky to examine the mound surrounded by circular earthworks and large square earthwork with to parallel earthworks extending from it.

The Sacred Vias extended across the Ohio River to the square earthwork that was 800 feet in length per side.  The Sacred Vias were both 2100 feet in length.

The Seal Township earthwork incorporated the same dimension as the Kentucky square earthwork of 800 feet per side.  The diameter of the Seal Township circle was 1050 feet which are half of the Kentucky Square's Sacred Vias.

   Native Americans had no system of measure of linking space and time, distance and direction. A measure of a hand or a days walk was about as precise as they needed. This is just one piece of evidence that these earthworks were not constructed by Native Americans.