Happy
birthday, Honest Abe.
President Barack Obama has brought additional attention to President Abraham Lincoln, but he has fascinated me, and most Americans, for many years.
My introduction to Lincoln came in first or second grade. Every day after lunch the teacher read a few pages of a book to the whole school—about a dozen pupils in grade one through eight. She read a biography focused on Lincoln as a boy. He faced tragedy early. His mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died not long after she taught him to read.
I remember the teacher reading about Thomas Lincoln bringing home a new wife, Sarah Bush Johnston, and her three daughters. She was not the wicked stepmother of Cinderella and Snow White. Instead she gave the lonely boy the love, understanding, and encouragement he needed to thrive in the tiny, isolated log cabin on the frontier. Many of the stories in the book told of his compulsion to learn and his search for books.
Since then I’ve read many books about Lincoln and visited his supposed birthplace, the reconstruction of the cabin in which he spent much of his boyhood, his home and law office in Springfield, the Soldiers’ Home where he escaped the heat of the summer during the Civil War, Ford’s Theater and the house where he died, and his tomb. We’ve made great efforts to feel close to and understand this unique man.
The poor boy growing up in the woods became one of the most complex, inspiring, brilliant men in all history. He embodies the universal dream of rags to power. Yet he remains unique in what he suffered, what he accomplished, and what he said.
On Lincoln’s birthday in my one-room school, we would cut out his silhouette and read the Gettysburg Address. Reading his words is still a great way to remember him.
—Carolyn Mulford
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