Today is the anniversary of the birth, in 1809, of Abraham
Lincoln. My small collection of books
specifically on his life include the first edition of the one-volume edition of
Carl Sandburg’s monumental six-volume biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years; Stephen B. Oates With Malice Toward None – A Life of Abraham Lincoln; the Library of
America’s two-volume Abraham Lincoln: Speeches
and Writings; James McPherson’s Abraham
Lincoln and the Second American Revolution; Garry Wills’s Lincoln at Gettysburg; and Jan Morris’s Lincoln: A Foreigner’s Quest. Some of these I’ve read fully, and some in
part.
Interestingly, the only one I’ve hardly touched is perhaps the
most famous of all – Sandburg’s biography.
I have a general bias toward more recent scholarship, and I’ve always
been suspicious, unfairly no doubt, that Sandburg was too close in time to the
actual man, and did not have the benefit of more fulsome scholarship and basic
research yet to come. But it’s on my
long get-to list!
Among his many qualities was his sometimes-droll great sense
of humor. One example I enjoy, from
Anthony Gross’s The Wit and Wisdom of
Abraham Lincoln:
While walking along a dusty road in
Illinois in his circuit days, Lincoln was overtaken by a stranger driving to
town. “Will you have the goodness to
take my overcoat to town for me?” asked Lincoln. “With pleasure, but how will you get it
again?” came the response. Lincoln
promptly replied “Oh, very readily. I
intend to remain in it.”
R Balsamo
