Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 4 The Powers of Nature Part 1

Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 4 The Powers of Nature Part 1

incoln grew up in the kind of physical and cultural environment that American thinkers often turned to for inspiration. Many easterners looked to the West for the vigor and creativity that they considered authentically American. Walt Whitman was hardly alone when he fantasized that a sturdy, western “blacksmith or boatman” would rescue America politically. 1 Emerson urged American writers to turn their eyes “westward” and take lessons from “the Kentucky stump-oratory, the exploits of Boone and David Crockett, the journals of the western pioneers, agriculturalists,” which Emerson called the nation’s “genuine growths.” 2 Emerson’s friend Thoreau, who lived for two years near Walden Pond to get close to nature, extolled the untamed vigor of the West. He wrote, “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and . . . in Wildness is the preservation of the World.” 3 Later, the aristocrat-turned-outdoorsman Teddy Roosevelt formed the nationwide Boone and Crockett Club, designed to f…