Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 3 Foundations of Presidential Character Part 1

Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 3 Foundations of Presidential Character Part 1

t an early age, Lincoln set off on a quest for meaning. His stepmother stated that as a boy he “must understand Every thing—even to the smallest thing—Minutely & Exactly—he would then repeat it over to himself again & again.” 1 Lincoln, when asked in 1860 by the Connecticut minister John P. Gulliver how he achieved his clear, powerful way of speaking, explained that ever since childhood he had sought ceaselessly for clarity. He recalled that the one thing that made him angry as a child was when he could not fully understand the conversations of neighbors who visited the cabin. He described to Gulliver going to his loft and “spending no small part of the night . . . trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. . . . I was not satisfied until I had repeated over and over, until I put it in language that was plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend.” 2 Lincoln’s faith in language developed during a cultural journey that bega…