Abraham Lincoln: From His Own Words and Contemporary Accounts (Know Your Government Series)

Lincoln story is ever fresh. It springs eternal from the deep current of human tribute that wells up to do homage to mans achievement in the realm of the moral and spiritual. That is why the obscure birth of a boy in a rude frontier log cabin was destined to unfold a chronicle that has become a heritage for the ages. So it is that the massive seated figure enshrined in the white temple in the Nation s Capital looks down silently but movingly upon the pilgrims who come to feel the atmosphere of mans true greatness. This was the man who split rails in frontier clearings, guided flatboats over the streams of the prairies and on the bosom of the Father of Waters, ate meagre lunches of cheese and crackers in gloomy despair in a barren law office, traveled the circuit and there enlisted law on the side of justice, cheered the countryside with a fund of humor, matched in skill and force of argument the advocates of antiquity in the historic debates with Douglas, freed the slaves, spoke the First and Second Inaugurals and the Gettysburg A ddress, and held in his hands unbroken at last the ties that bound together a people and made a nation. Lincoln, in the year before his death, told a friend that he had never read an entire novel in his life. This same man could carry a volume of Euclid in his pocket for months as his constant companion. He was ever concerned with and engrossed in realities; yet his instinct of interpreting human nature in terms of fable was as rich as A esop s. His language matched the A nglo-S axon of Shakespeare and the beauty and simplicity of the Old Testament. He was a patient, canny politician. He was self-reliant. The resources within himself were large and ample. He listened with courteous patience to the thoughts ot others, but in the end the independence of his own judgment resolved the decision. A ny search for the fountains of Lincoln (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)