Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 2 Child of the Frontier Part 1

Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 2 Child of the Frontier Part 1

L incoln biographers have long been challenged to explain his apparently miraculous transformation from an ill-educated frontier youth into a wise statesman. Ever since William Herndon and Jesse Weik in their 1888 biography wrote that Lincoln rose from a “greater depth” than any other great person, starting out from “a stagnant, putrid pool,” Lincoln’s life has been seen as a climb from extremely adverse conditions to the height of power. 1  How could someone with barely literate parents, little access to books, and less than a year of schooling become a deeply informed, tactful political leader? Lincoln played up his image as the self-made man. To a campaign biographer, he generalized that his youth could be summed up in Thomas Gray’s phrase “the short and simple annals of the poor.” 2  It was, after all, advantageous for him to claim that he came from a very lowly background, for it confirmed his image as the true democratic American—one of the people, like such national icons as Benjami…