{"id":1562,"date":"2022-06-30T03:12:52","date_gmt":"2022-06-30T03:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/teagle\/?page_id=1562"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:47:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:47:01","slug":"abraham-lincoln-autobiographical-sketch-1859","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/teagle\/texts\/abraham-lincoln-autobiographical-sketch-1859\/","title":{"rendered":"Abraham Lincoln, Autobiographical Sketch (1859)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If any personal description of me is thought\u00a0desired<\/span>\u00a0desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes — no other marks or brands recollected–<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Lincoln<\/a>
Lincoln during his time in Congress (Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the age of fifty, Abraham Lincoln was an attorney in Springfield, Illinois, running a two-man law firm.\u00a0 He had been married for seventeen years.\u00a0 The Lincolns had three surviving boys, with their eldest son Robert getting ready to try to become the first member of the family ever to go to college.\u00a0 Yet future president Lincoln was a more powerful national figure than it might appear.\u00a0 He was widely regarded as the leader of the Republican Party in Illinois.\u00a0 That was important because for the\u00a0 Republicans to win the presidency, they almost had to win Illinois, a key swing state in the electoral college of that era.\u00a0 Moreover, Lincoln had recently vaulted into popular consciousness following his impressive performance in a series of senatorial debates against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas during the fall campaign in 1858.\u00a0 So, it was really no surprise in late 1859 when a Pennsylvania newspaper editor reached out to Jesse W. Fell, a leading Illinois Republican whom he knew well, to ask if he could help secure some autobiographical information from Lincoln which they could use to create a profile of him as part of a series on leading Republican presidential contenders.\u00a0 The result from Lincoln was a short but revealing sketch that offered nothing about his wife or children or his faith but provided numerous signs that in describing his background that he was diligently trying to connect to various audiences in the Northern electorate.<\/p>\n

SOURCE FORMAT:\u00a0 Letter and recollection<\/strong><\/p>\n

WORD COUNT:\u00a0 710 words<\/strong><\/p>\n

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