| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Origins | |
| Lincoln's ancestry | |
| Thomas Lincoln in New Orleans | |
| Lincoln's Kentucky birth and childhood | |
| Indiana boyhood | |
| Lincoln and the Ohio River | |
| A traumatic end and a new beginning | p. 7 |
| The 1828 Experience | |
| Warm weather, high water | |
| Building the flatboat | |
| The launch mystery | |
| Initial evidence for a spring launch | |
| The case for a fall/winter launch | |
| Weaknesses in the fall/winter launch hypothesis | |
| Further evidence for a spring launch | |
| The likely departure date | |
| Launch site, cargo, itinerary, and speed | |
| Down the Ohio River | |
| Into the Mississippi River | |
| Into Louisiana waters | |
| Lingering along the Louisiana sugar coast | |
| The attack | |
| Locating the attack site | |
| Recovering and proceeding | |
| Arriving in New Orleans | |
| Docking at the flatboat wharf | |
| Narrowing down the docking site | |
| Dispensing of the cargo | |
| Life along the flatboat wharf | |
| Dismantling the flatboat | |
| Footloose in New Orleans | |
| Room and board | |
| Conspicuous bumpkins | |
| "Babel of all Babels ... Sodom of all Sodoms" | |
| Window to the world | |
| Slaves on the run, slaves on the block | |
| Hewlett's Exchange | |
| Sightseeing | |
| People | |
| watching | |
| Retailing | |
| Street life | |
| Departure | |
| A different view of Indiana | |
| Off to Illinois | |
| Deep snows, dark times | p. 35 |
| The 1831 Experience | |
| Construction and launch | |
| Mill-dam incident | |
| Second voyage to New Orleans | |
| A change of crew at St. Louis | |
| Southbound | |
| Making an acquaintance | |
| Arriving in New Orleans | |
| In the streets, circa 1831 | |
| 170 people | |
| Elijah | |
| Pontchartrain Railroad, the talk of the town | |
| The final departure | p. 143 |
| Lincoln and New Orleans, 1831-1865 | p. 185 |
| The Lalaurie incident | |
| William de Fleurville | |
| The John Shelby incident | |
| Presidency and war | |
| Fall of New Orleans | |
| Emancipation | |
| A spy in New Orleans | |
| The Louisiana experiment | |
| Roudanez and Bertonneau | |
| A dark and indefinite shore | p. 185 |
| Conclusions | |
| The slavery influence | |
| The internal improvements influence | |
| The political image influence | |
| The worldview influence | |
| The rite-of-passage influence | |
| The mythological influence | p. 207 |
| Appendix A | Western River Commerce in the Early 1800s | |
| Americans in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys | |
| Routes to market | |
| Western river craft | |
| The flatboat | |
| "Cutting loose" | |
| Life on board | |
| Flatboat travel | |
| Flatboat cargo | |
| The keelboat | |
| The steamboat Voyage of the New Orleans | |
| The new West | |
| Western river trade in Lincoln's era | |
| The flatboatman in Lincoln's era | p. 247 |
| Appendix B | New Orleans in the 1820s-1830s | p. 285 |
| Rough start in a place apart | |
| A dramatic change of destiny | |
| Creoles in a new American city | |
| Americans in an old Creole city | |
| Cotton and sugar commerce | |
| Risk, ruin, and reward | |
| A growing and diversifying population | |
| Ethnic tensions | |
| Slavery and race relations | |
| Geography | |
| of slavery | |
| A cityscape of bondage | |
| Slave trading | |
| The city from afar | |
| The port up close | |
| Port management | |
| Port controversies | |
| Urban growth and internal improvements | |
| The Great Southern Emporium | p. 285 |
| References | p. 343 |
