Joe Wheeler - Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage. Stories of Our Most Admired President

Why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilled statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his countrybigger than all the presidents together.

We are still too near his greatness, but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.

L EO T OLSTOY

As, in spite of some weaknesses, Republicanism is the sole hope of a sick world, so Lincoln with all his foibles, is the greatest character since Christ.

J OHN H AY (U.S. Secretary of State)

Which presidents are kids most interested in reading about?

I was standing in the childrens section of a local chain bookstore. Id asked the lady at the information desk to take me to books about presidents.

She looked at me as though Id come from another planet. Who elseLincoln and Washington.

Any runners-up?

Nope. Nobody else in sight.

I had figured as much. Now I was just doing an informal survey. Well, I said, between Lincoln and Washington, which one do they ask about most?

She laughed. Theres no contest. Its Lincoln by a country mile.

Hmm, I said. Id gotten the same answer from elementary and middle school librarians.

Apparently more books have been written about Lincoln than about all the rest of our presidents put together. More poems have been written about Lincoln than about all the other presidents put together. More quotations originating with Lincoln are in circulation than for all the rest of our presidents put together, and thats not even counting the vast number of other quotations that are attributed to him. More anecdotes associated with Lincoln exist than for all the rest of our presidents put together. We have more stories told by Lincoln than we have from all the rest put together.

For many years I have made a living collecting stories into anthologies. So it is with professional wonder that I survey the multitude of stories about Lincoln, true and otherwise, that have been written about him. Far more of these tales exist about Lincoln than for all the rest of the presidents put together. Abraham Lincoln is and was an epic, legendary figure in American history.

Three of our national holidaysPresidents Day, Memorial Day, and Thanksgivingare directly tied to Lincoln. Nor is his fame restricted to the United States. Lincoln is the one American who is revered around the world. He is, indeed, the only universally beloved American.

Our son Greg is an advertising copywriter. He tells us that one of the absolutes in advertising is this: No matter what the product, just tie Lincoln to it and its guaranteed to sell.

Nor does this fascination seem about to fade any time soon. Interest in Lincoln has done nothing but build since his presidency. With untold millions of words written about him, it is logical to assume that there couldnt be anything new to discover. And yet new Lincoln biographies continue to pour out of publishing houses. Momentum will only compound as we near 2009 (the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth) and 2011 to 2015 (the hundred-fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War years).

A N E NDURING L EGACY

As a historian of ideas I have long been fascinated by biographical history. One of my central questions has been the exploration of why the vast majority of historical luminaries flicker out before another generation comes on the scene and why others endure. Fame itself has been reduced to fifteen minutes in our time. For a name to survive in the national consciousness for two generations is abnormal, three generations is a miracle.

Yet each new generation has found and continues to find something special in the sixteenth president, something no one wants to live without.

What that something might be has never been more aptly summed up than by Lloyd Lewis in his landmark book Myths after Lincoln. Lewis postulated that a nation doesnt really consider itself to be a nation until someone, against all odds, emerges from the mass and stands out against the sky. Many there are who tread the stages of their age acclaimed by thousands and appear to be heroes. Yet in the leveling field of death and with the perspective time brings, almost all crumble into the dust of forgottenhood. It takes almost superhuman qualities to surviveadmired, honored, and lovedfrom generation to generation to generation, to evolve at last into imperishable myth, Lewis says.

For ninety years America vainly struggled to produce such a towering figure of myth. Neither Jackson nor Jefferson made it. Not even Washington, who was too austere, too cold in his perfections to claim anything more than their formal reverence and sober admiration. Besides, Lewis notes, all those heroes lived too long, and by no stretch of the imagination could their passing be construed as mysterious, miraculous, or sacrificial.

All that changed in April of 1865:

It was not until Lincoln had been assassinated and his body seen firsthand by 1,500,000 people, that something truly miraculous took place. As they saw him stretched to his giants length in the coffin, they remembered with awe how cool and strong he had seemed through those four years of terror, now miraculously ended. Remembering how he had been abused during his lifetime, and how even his friends had mistaken his patience for weakness, the people began to revere him. Seeing his body go back to the common soil amid such sobbing pomp, they understood in full that he had sacrificed himself for them. Dimly, but with elemental power, they felt he had died out of love for the people.