Lincoln Lore

The day after Abraham Lincoln came from behind a well-populated field of potential candidates to win the Republican party’s nomination for president of the United States, an “annoyed and dejected” Thurlow Weed packed his bags and prepared “to shake the...

Sara Gabbard: Which presidents do you believe showed the great­est leadership skills.   Al Zacher: Strong presidential leader­ship might be defined as the ability of a president to pursue major objectives to fulfillment. This requires persever­ance, support of the public...

Sara Gabbard: Please explain Clay’s early legal representation of Aaron Burr. Did the relationship cause him later regret? John Marszalek: In the early 19th century, Henry Clay and Aaron Burr were both young up-and-comers in American politics. Yet, Clay became...

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Jason H. Silverman Vereinigte Staaten von Nord-America und Mexico, 71200908501056 The darkening clouds of Civil War were not all the portentous developments that newly elected Abraham Lincoln faced when he arrived in Washington, DC.  With the United States seemingly weakened...

by E. Phelps Gay Birthplace cabin, 7120090811753 How did Lincoln view the South? What did he know about the South? Had he been to the South? Did he hate the South? Or, instead, did he like Southerners? Did he blame...

Moderated by Harold Holzer A public sensation in the seven Illinois towns that hosted them—reprinted in the press at the time, in book form shortly thereafter, and in many edi­tions since—the 1858 Lincoln-Doug­las debates are remembered today, 160 years after...

By Ed Breen Charleston Joe Judd sat behind the counter of his used book store at 303 Lincoln Avenue on the west side of Charleston, Illinois,  and talked about what it meant to him and others in town that their...

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By Richard E. Hart This essay is a summary of the book Entertainment in Lincoln’s Springfield (1834-1860) by Richard E. Hart and published by the Abraham Lincoln Association in November of 2017. The public entertainments within a community are a...

by Nerida F. Ellerton and M.A. (Ken) Clements The oldest extant handwritten manuscript of Abraham Lincoln is his cyphering book, which comprised written solutions to arithmetic problems that he solved when he was at school. The most detailed description and...

By Hon. Frank J. Williams Imagine, if you will, that the United States suffers an unexpected attack.  The president deploys the armed forces and assumes extraordinary powers that go well beyond what the Constitution seems to allow.  Thousands of persons...

By Harold Holzer As most readers of 19th-century history know, the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates sparked an explosion of public interest in Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, and the sport of political debating itself.  The encounters not only riveted the tens...

Unidentified Indiana Soldiers, LN-2353 Sara Gabbard:    How far back in history can you trace the concept of Just War? Frank Williams:  In the first millennium, Christians in the Roman Empire, who originally rejected any form of warfare in accordance with...

Lincoln and his cabinet, LN-2651 Abraham Lincoln’s mature style as a writer and speaker was always terse, with little wastage of words. He loathed blow-hards, and remarked to a legal protégé in Illinois that one Chicago merchant who had turned...