Abraham Lincoln it will cease to be divided It will become all one thing or all the other Or this line delivered by then-President Lincoln to an Indiana regiment in March 1865 four years into the war Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slav ery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally Perhaps it was the axe-wielding prow ess Lincoln mastered in his early years that informed his way with words allowing him to chop to the core of a complex issue but he was a master at creating tight pithy utter ances Perhaps the most memorable and extraordinary example of Lincoln’s singu lar ability to find the essence of an occasion or thought or emotion was his 268-word Gettysburg Address in 1863 As president Lincoln was asked to speak to those gathered at the dedication ceremony of the National Cemetery on the site of one of the Civil War’s deadliest battles nearly 8,000 soldiers died in the three-day struggle His presence at the site was something of a postscript to the main speaker Edward Everett an erudite and 8
Introduction esteemed orator of the day Lincoln’s speech began with the now indelible sentence Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and ded icated to the proposition that all men are created equal Lincoln’s speech took a mere three min utes Everett’s lasted two hours It is a fairly safe bet that most Americans do not even remember that Everett spoke at Gettysburg on that day but say those words from Lincoln’s address and they will know if not whence it came then at least who said it Lincoln’s character is also well known Honest Hardworking Humble Intelligent Thoughtfully decisive He was not however always strictly serious and his sense of humor is sometimes overlooked Witness this line uttered and then recounted by Lincoln in a dream of his in response to an observer com menting that he was a common-looking man Common-looking people are the best in the world that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them 9
Abraham Lincoln What readers also may not know about Lincoln and will learn in this book is that he was a gifted wrestler And that before becoming a lawyer a member of the Illinois General Assembly a representative of Illinois in the U S Congress and ultimately one of the most pivotal presidents of the United States of America he had held jobs as a rail splitter a postmaster a store clerk a ferryboat pilot and a surveyor Many hats for the man famous for wearing the stovepipe hat But as the multitalented and variously employed man from Kentucky once said Whatever you are be a good one 10
