\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 February 12, 1809, 202 years ago, lost in the wild frontier of Kentucky in a log cabin placed at the side of a creek called Nolan, outside the settlement of Hogdenville, a miracle of history occurred. An illiterate tenant farmer named Thomas Lincoln and his wife Nancy Hanks brought into the world an epic soul. From such humble roots, one of the great thinkers and unquestionably one of the world\u2019s most gifted leaders came into being to a nearly untouched natural world. He was Abraham Lincoln, and in his relatively brief life of 56 years shook the very foundations of his nation and changed it forever.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is the ultimate test of nature versus nurture when one examines the life production of Abraham Lincoln. He certainly had no significant identifiable schooling, and his upbringing provided nearly no stimulants for learning beyond the skills needed to survive in a very rough and occasionally brutal wilderness. His step-mother Sarah Johnson, coming into the family after the untimely death of Lincoln\u2019s mother at age 11, found a melancholic and wild boy, but inured in him an uncommon devotion due to her unstinting love for him. \u00a0Though illiterate herself, she saw in him something nobody else saw, and pushed him to learn to read and write. In the Indiana wilderness the family moved to, Lincoln proved a voracious self taught student in writing skills, grammar, and the few books available to him. The entire scope of his training was frankly his will to learn, and the interpretations of his learning all his own. From wilderness wild cat to eventual local learned man, the philosophic world view devised by Lincoln was entirely unique and his own creation.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 David Herbert Donald\u2019s Lincoln <\/em><\/strong>biography <\/a>is in my mind the most passionately human biography of Lincoln and a must read for any who wishes to understand Lincoln the man who became Lincoln the colossal historical figure. The specific chapters reflecting the years of Lincoln as a young circuit lawyer in Illinois are essentially perfectly written. Lincoln was a mental sponge, forgetting no personal interaction, no lesson to be learned, no overarching theme to the simplest disputes and events. He built on his friendships, his experiences, and his battles to develop an uncommon awareness of the unique qualities of the American Experience and the vital role of the common man in framing it. With no apparent template for a guide, he created a strong and complex capacity to understand, and importantly, elucidate that understanding to others, in clear and precise language. It was a skill that was natural, his own, and absolutely, genius.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lincoln wrote and spoke on so many topics of importance to his time that an entire career studying the many moments of brilliance have consumed academicians since his life ended.\u00a0 The more amazing reality is how often he spoke in a way that evoked universal themes that crossed multiple generations that speak to us today.\u00a0 The speeches written by Lincoln resonate for our time; the House Divided speech, the Lincoln Douglas debates, the first and second Inaugurals, and the jewel in the crown, the Gettysburg Address.\u00a0 He was additionally at his greatest in the simple letter responses to friends, and the letters of consolation to the war\u2019s bereaved, showing each his ability to understand their prism of understanding, their own special role and their personal sorrow.\u00a0\u00a0 This President in saintly fashion absorbed every arrow, every pain, every loss, every need as his own, and it showed stunningly in his rapid aging in photos over the five year period of the Civil War.\u00a0 The mind , though, did not age, and his brilliance revealed in the final weeks of his life showed eternal strength of character and a bottomless\u00a0desire to take on monstrous social complexities and provide the leadership to solve them. Everyone\u2019s favorite Lincoln is their\u00a0special Lincoln \u2013 Lincoln the Western Railsplitter, Lincoln the Writer, Lincoln the Philosopher, Lincoln the War Leader, Lincoln the Speech Maker.\u00a0 Any one of these Lincoln\u2019s would be worthy of a birthday treatise.\u00a0 Lincoln the Miracle Man is my favorite today \u2013 the perfect Product from nothing, out of nothing, through the strength of his own will and the freedom offered by his society to have an equal chance\u00a0as any other, to excel, and flourish at a miracle level, to the benefit of us all.\u00a0 He is the man, who\u00a0at his First Inaugural, looking into\u00a0the dark chasm of the impending cataclysm of the Civil War, forgave us our sinful stubbornness and projected the way\u00a0 to our eventual salvation by relying on our inherent goodness and the saving grace of our humanity:<\/p>\n \u201d I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends.\u00a0 We must not be enemies\u2026.The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and headstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell\u00a0 the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the occasion of the two hundred third anniversary of the birth of one of the\u00a0epic\u00a0figures of human history and one of mankind’s noblest humans, I wish to present a repeat reading of my 2011 birthday tribute to Abraham Lincoln.\u00a0\u00a0 The Great One. The Great One – Originally Posted on February 12, 2011 by … <\/p>\n
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