After Washington, who is called the greatest American?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln, who was elected President of the United States in the year 1860, and who was re-elected to the same high position in the year 1864, and was assassinated the year 1865.
What were some of the difficulties that Abraham Lincoln overcame as child and youth in his preparation for a useful and honorable career?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln's parents were poor. They lived in the backwoods among rude and ignorant neighbors in an unfinished, almost unfurnished log cabin. His father could not read or write. They took no papers and had no books except the Bible.
What qualities and aids did Abraham Lincoln possess and secure to meet and overcome his disadvantages?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln had a good memory, a great desire to learn, great patience, and perseverance. His mother taught him to read and write. He would travel miles to borrow any book he heard of and would read by the fire-light from the open hearth.
What occupations did he pursue as boy and man on his way from the cabin to the White House?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln was a wood chopper, rail splitter, ferry boatman, flat boatman, storekeeper as clerk and owner, postmaster, surveyor, lawyer, legislator, and congressman.
What was remarkable about the person and appearance of Abraham Lincoln?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln was six feet and four inches tall, very spare, angular and awkward in gesture.
He dressed in plain black clothes somewhat neglected and loose. He wore a black silk hat. His face was very spare, and his eyes deeply sunk, wore an expression of great sadness.
Name a few of the most notable public addresses of Abraham Lincoln.
Answer: The debates of Abraham Lincoln with Stephen A. Douglas made him known to the whole country as the coming man. His address before a great audience at Cooper Union confirmed his reputation as an orator. His two inaugural addresses won him friends and fame. His Gettysburg address ranks with the efforts of the greatest speakers of all time, and though brief, makes a fitting companion piece for Washington's Farewell Address.
What elements of political sagacity did Abraham Lincoln posses and exert, that caused his administration of his great office to be successful?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln had a knowledge of man and when he believed in a man he gave him a fair trial and time to develop and carry out his plans - but he had the courage and firmness to displace the McClellans and Meades, and to sustain the Grants, Shermans, and Sheridans to the end, despite of what politicians and critics hinted or said.
What great instrument did he issue to hasten the end of the war?
Answer: The Emancipation Proclamation, which was followed by such action of Congress as put an end to slavery in the United States.
Why do we Americans admire Abraham Lincoln?
Answer: Americans, with the rest of the civilized world, admire "Honest Old Abe" for his clear foresight, his honest purpose to maintain the union of these states, and his successful suppression of the greatest rebellion under the sun.
Why do we Americans love the memory of Abraham Lincoln?
Answer: Americans love the memory of Abraham Lincoln, the affectionate son of an affectionate mother. He loved the common people, was plain and simple in his life, was kind to the soldier boys, thoughtful for their families, and mourned over the dead.
