Editor’s note: The article was submitted by Ronald H. Koehn.
Ronald H. Koehn of Fulton, IL, will present a PowerPoint program entitled “What’s So Special about Lincoln?”, sponsored by the Odell Public Library. The program is at 6:30 p.m., on Monday, January 8, 2018, at the library, 307 S. Madison Street, Morrison, IL. How do we account for Abraham Lincoln’s brilliant success as President? What special qualities or abilities did he possess? These are questions that Koehn will attempt to address in his program. The program is free and open to the public.
When Barack Obama of Illinois was elected 44th President of the United States in 2008, there was much talk about his improbable journey to the White House. Yet, when Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was elected 16th President, his journey to the Executive Mansion was even more improbable.
On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born on a hardscrabble farm near Hodgenville in Hardin County, KY, to Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, poverty-stricken illiterates born in Virginia to undistinguished families. In 1816 the family relocated to the wilderness of Spencer County, IN, where young Abe’s mother died from “milk sickness” within two years. Living on the frontier, he sporadically received his scant amount of formal education, perhaps 12 to 18 months total.
Raised to hard manual labor on the farm, Lincoln worked as a grocery store clerk, farmhand, and ferryboat rower on the Ohio River. After his family relocated to Illinois, Lincoln clerked in a village store, served as a militiaman for a few months during the Black Hawk War of 1832, and went into partnership in a general store which failed. He then worked as an Assistant Surveyor, studied law by reading borrowed books, and served as Postmaster in New Salem, IL, for three years.
Lincoln served as a Whig in the Illinois General Assembly from 1834 to 1842, was licensed to practice law in 1836, and married Mary Todd, a well-educated member of a prosperous Kentucky family, in 1842. Lincoln served as a U. S. Representative from 1847 to 1849, but he was not re-nominated. Forsaking politics, he concentrated on developing a successful law practice in Springfield, IL. However, his interest in politics was suddenly reawakened by the passage of the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, sponsored by U. S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.
In 1854 Lincoln was an unsuccessful candidate for the U. S. Senate, and two years later he was an unsuccessful Vice Presidential candidate, at the first Republican National Convention. In his bid for re-election to the U. S. Senate in 1858, Stephen A. Douglas defeated Lincoln. But Lincoln gained National exposure and prominence within the Republican Party by debating the slavery issue in Illinois. In 1860 he secured the Republican nomination for President as a “dark horse” compromise candidate, much to the dismay of his better-educated and more experienced rivals. Lincoln’s improbable journey to the Presidency culminated with his Electoral College victory, in a four-way contest which split the Democratic Party.
With the seven states of the Lower South seceding from the Union and with the organization of the Confederate States of America prior to his inauguration on March 4, 1861, Lincoln became the President of the “Divided States of America,” facing a national crisis of monumental proportions. Considering his lack of formal education and scant public service of note, Abraham Lincoln appeared less likely to succeed as the Nation’s Chief Executive than most men who have occupied the office.