Lincoln's Big Day

Today is a birthday for someone special!  My historian friend reminded me last night, still upset that it was swept under Presidents' Day ("Washington's Birthday" per opm.gov) – always a Monday, of course.  So now we have a grand federal holiday honoring ALL of the U.S. presidents, whether we like them or not. (See timeanddate.com.)

Abraham Lincoln was born February 12, 1809, in Kentucky, "in a log cabin at Sinking Springs Farm."  – nps.gov

One of my treasured acquisitions from a DI thrift store is a large paperback book titled Lincoln – A Photobiography by Russell Freedman ©1987, Scholastic Inc., New York NY.
(Wish I could show some photos published in this fascinating, copyrighted book.)

"It's true that Lincoln had little formal 'eddication,' as he would have pronounced it.  Almost everything he 'larned' he taught himself.  All his life he said 'thar' for there, 'git' for get, 'kin' for can.  Even so, he became an eloquent public speaker who could hold a vast audience spellbound, and a great writer whose finest phrases still ring in our ears.  He was known to sit up late into the night, discussing Shakespeare's plays with White House visitors."  – Freedman, p.4

"... infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln."
– Frederick Douglass, "abolitionist writer and editor", former slave; Freedman, p.5

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.  This expresses my idea of democracy."  Abraham Lincoln  – brainyquote.com

I have heard and read both good and bad, but personally I stand in awe of the man Lincoln.  How do you celebrate his birthday?

"with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right"  – Lincoln
Monument we visited at Gettysburg PA 15 June 2010