Abraham Lincoln – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

Did President Lincoln Really Need the Beard?
(Collier’s Magazine, 1948)

When an eleven year-old girl advised Abraham Lincoln to grow some whiskers, the great man humbly took her suggestion to heart:

I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.

The rest is history.

Click here to read an 1862 review about the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady.

The Books Lincoln Read
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1920)

Examine Lincoln’s prose and the fruitage of his reading will appear… The easy quickening of Lincoln’s mind came from books like Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Caruso and Pilgrim’s Progress… To a man who knew intimately so many creatures, both wild and domestic, the fables seemed natural.

The Clothing of Abraham Lincoln
(Coronet Magazine, 1950)

The attached article is a segment from a longer one about the history of Brooks Brothers and it confirms that the Great Emancipator was one of their customers, as were the Union Army Generals Grant, Sherman and Hooker.

Click here if you would like to read the entire article about the first 132 years of Brooks Brothers.

Lincoln Without the Myths
(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

Relying on the expertise of various Lincoln scholars (Paul M. Angle, Dr. William Barton, Reinhard Luthin and David Mearns), efforts were made to verify whether or not all the many aphorisms, bon mots, maxims and plentiful epigrams attributed to Lincoln were indeed authored by the slain president, or were they the product of the hundreds of forgers and prevaricators that followed in his wake.

Abraham Lincoln: Inventor
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1940)

There, to a coterie of Lincoln addicts on Abe’s 131st birthday, U.S. Patent Commissioner Conway P. Coe displayed a model of a device Lincoln patented in 1849, when he was still an unknown congressman from Illinois. Commissioner Coe read the patent application, in Lincoln’s own handwriting, for a gadget to float flatboats in shallow water.

A Study of the Gettysburg Address
(The Outlook, 1913)

Jesse W. Weik (1857 – 1930) was one of the earliest of Lincoln scholars.

In preparation for Herndon and Weik’s Life of Lincoln (1889), he visited every place in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky where Abraham Lincoln lived; examined the records of all the lawsuits in which Lincoln was engaged, and talked to everyone he could find who knew Lincoln. For thirty years and more he has made a special study of the sources, written and unwritten, of the personal history of President Lincoln.

Lincoln’s Address at Cooper Union
(The National Park Service, 1956)

Before his 1860 address at the Cooper Institute (presently known as Cooper Union) Abraham Lincoln was known in the East chiefly as a rather obscure western lawyer who had gained some prestige a little over a year earlier in the debates with Douglas during the Illinois senatorial contest. The day after the address Horace Greeley’s NEW YORK TRIBUNE remarked:

No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.

This speech put within Lincoln’s grasp a chance for the Presidency.

Attached, you will find his very powerful conclusion to the address.

Click here to read about the Confederate conscription laws.

H.L. Mencken: Not Impressed with Lincoln
(The Smart Set, 1920)

As far as culture critic and all-around nay-sayer H.L. Mencken was concerned, Abraham Lincoln was simply another opportunist who fed at the federal trough and he found himself at a loss when it came to understanding the American deification of the man. It seemed that even Jefferson Davis might have had an easier time uttering a few sweet words to describe Lincoln then did the Bard of Baltimore. Yet, there was one contribution Lincoln made that Mencken applauded, the Gettysburg Address:

It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost gem-like perfection –the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it [in other speeches]. It is genuinely stupendous.

(Although, like any unreconstructed Confederates, he thought the argument was all a bunch of rot.)

The Lincoln – Douglas Debates Observed
(The National Park Service, 1956)

These four paragraphs first appeared on the pages of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE and were written by a reporter named of Horace White at the conclusion of Lincoln – Douglas debates of 1858. The journalist did a fine job in describing the excitement at the debates and the spirit of the participating candidates.

Douglas ended in a whirlwind of applause…and Lincoln began to speak in a slow and rather awkward way. He had a thin tenor, or rather falsetto voice, almost as high pitched as a boatswain’s whistle.

The debates resulted in a close election that returned Douglas to the U.S. Senate and Lincoln to his law practice.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
(National Park Service, 1956)

Here is the brief text to President Lincoln‘s very eloquent second inaugural address, that was delivered during the closing weeks of the Civil War.

Lincoln Remembered
(National Park Service, 1956)

Shortly after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, William H. Herndon (1816 – 1891), Lincoln’s law partner, devoted much of his life to collecting as much original source material on the man as he could possibly find. Indeed, scholars have pointed out that there never would have been an accurate word written about Lincoln if not for the efforts of Herndon. The following description of Lincoln is from a lecture delivered by Herndon in 1865.

The Lincoln – Douglas Debates: Defining Slavery
(National Park Service, 1956)

The Republican Party, which developed rapidly as a new political force following the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, gathered its strength chiefly from those who opposed the extension of slavery into the territories. In the Lincoln – Douglas Debates this issue was paramount. Perhaps nowhere can a more concise and explicit statement of the position of the Republican Party on this issue be found than in Mr. Lincoln’s opening speech at Quincy [Illinois] in the sixth of the joint debates.

John Hay Recalls Lincoln
(National Park Service, 1956)

John Hay (1838 – 1905), formerly one of Lincoln’s private secretaries, wrote out some of his recollections of Lincoln’s daily personal and official habits as President.

He was very abstemious, ate less than anyone I know. Drank nothing but water, not from principle, but because he did not like wine or spirits.

Hay was in Paris serving as Secretary of United States Legation when he wrote the letter, about a year and a half after Lincoln’s death.

The conduct of the war contributed mightily to Lincoln’s rapidly aging appearance. Look at this photo-essay examining his facial decay year by hear: click here.

Traveling to the Lincoln – Douglas Debate
(National Park Service, 1956)

Stephen Douglas (1813 – 1861), Lincoln’s Democratic rival in the contest for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois, was a popular figure with a great deal of political capitol who enjoyed wide spread fame throughout much of the fruited plain; this all contributed to a robust ego which would not suffer anything less than traveling to the debates in a grand style. By contrast, Honest Abe traveled in economy class, packed among the masses (although as a railroad lawyer, he certainly could have afforded better).

This short paragraph (accompanied by a photograph of both men) was written by a friend of Lincoln who recalled his train ride with the (losing) candidate as he made his way to Ottawa, Illinois, the site of the first debate.

Click here to read about a dream that President Lincoln had, a dream that anticipated his violent death.