File:Biographies and stories of Abraham Lincoln (1865) (14761910431).jpg

Identifier: biographiesstor00linc (find matches)
Title: Biographies and stories of Abraham Lincoln
Year: 1886 (1880s)
Authors: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Subjects: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 Presidents
Publisher:
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: Friends of The Lincoln Collection of Indiana, Inc.

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r when he was18. His father, a distantman, was unable to fillthe void. Lincoln even-tually left home, at 22,for Illinois, where hevaulted up the socialladder. He was soonelected to the local leg-islature, serving fourterms. He taught himselflaw, becoming a respectedattorney, then married intoone of Springfields most pow-erful families. Not long after, hewas elected to the U.S. House of Repre-sentatives. In the 1850s, Lincoln joinedthe Republican Party, a new coalition ofnorthern antislavery groups, and fa-mously debated Stephen Douglas, one ofIllinoiss sitting senators, about the futureof slavery in the Union. In I860, he ran forpresident and won. Historians insist, however, that therewere bumps on the road to the WhiteHouse that have been lost to popularhistory. Its easy to just hit people withthe slam-dunk of martyrdom and per-fection, says Joseph Garrera, presidentof the Lincoln Group of New York, a his-torical society devoted to Lincoln schol-arship, but his rise to power was more
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complicated than that.In telling this story,though, historianshave faced one majorobstacle: Lincoln livedin frontier towns formost of his life. Tangi-ble evidence of his com-ings and goings is hard tocome by. As a result, hisearly years have often gottenshort shrift.The primary source of informationon Lincolns life in Illinois is a long-ne-glected collection of interviews con-ducted by William Herndon, Lincolnslaw partner of 16 years. After Lincolnwas killed, Herndon set out to gatherand transcribe the stories of more than250 people who had known the presi-dent during his time on the frontier.Their memories, though, were shaky-many hadnt seen Lincoln for 30 yearsor more—and their stories were some-times contradictory. Herndon com-piled some of these accounts into a bi-ography in 1889, but the first historianswho were able to access his collection,in the 1940s and 50s, dismissed much of it as gossip and moved on. In the past decade, however, scholarshave taken a closer look at what H

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