Lincoln's Birthday: A Comprehensive View of Lincoln as Given in the Most Noteworthy Essays, Orations and Poems, in Fiction and in Lincoln's Own Writings

This anthology gathers the most powerful essays, orations, poetry, and fiction inspired by Abraham Lincoln, alongside selections from Lincoln's own writings, creating a multidimensional portrait of the man who guided America through its darkest hour. The collection captures the extraordinary sweep of Lincoln's legacy: his improbable rise from frontier poverty to the presidency, his moral courage in facing a nation at war with itself, and the grief that transformed him into something like a secular saint in American consciousness. Each piece in these pages reflects a writer's attempt to comprehend him, to grapple with how one man could possess such steadiness in the face of impossible choices, such gentleness beneath the weight of command. The volume was assembled with young readers specifically in mind, aiming to preserve the wave of national reflection that followed Lincoln's assassination and channel it into enduring inspiration. Here is Lincoln as seen through the eyes of poets and philosophers, politicians and ordinary citizens, all reaching toward the same elusive truth: what America meant to him, and what he came to mean to America.