Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode number 16 of our Civil War Podcast.

I'm Rich.

And I'm Tracy. Hello, y'all. Welcome to the podcast. Rich and I realized it just happened to work out that this is the 16th episode of the podcast and we're devoting this show to Abraham Lincoln, who of course was the 16th president of the United States.

Yeah, quite the coincidence and kind of neat. But anyway, as we said last week, we're going to use this episode and actually the next one also to give you guys a picture of Lincoln's life up to 1858,

which is when the famous Lincoln Douglas debates took place. And so then after bringing Lincoln's life story up to speed with this special two-parter, after that, we'll talk about the debates.

So without further ado, by writing very little about his early life, it probably wasn't Abraham Lincoln's intent to frustrate future historians, but that's been the result of his reticence nonetheless.

Lincoln did provide a couple of brief autobiographies for use by newspapers when he ran for president in 1860. And historians over the years have lamented the fact that other than those terse guarded statements, Lincoln opened up so little about his early life.

In 1860, when a journalist named John Scripps asked him to provide information for a campaign biography, Abraham Lincoln said,

it is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life. But newspapers naturally wanted to know about the background of the Republican Party's presidential candidate.

So Lincoln did end up writing a couple of autobiographical sketches for use by the papers. One of those statements was published on February 11, 1860. It read,

I was born February 12, 1809 in Harden County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia of undistinguished families. Second families, perhaps I should say.

My mother, who died in my 10th year, was a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams and others in Macon County's Illinois.

My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia to Kentucky about 1781 or two, where a year or two later he was killed by Indians, not in battle, but by stealth when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest.

My father, at the death of his father, was about six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana in my eighth year.

We reached our new home about the time the state came into the Union. It was a wild region with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up.

There were some schools, so-called, but no qualification was every required of a teacher beyond reading, writing, and ciphering to the role of three.

If a straggler supposed to understand Latin was in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education.

Of course, when I came of age, I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the role of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since.

The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

If we fast forward to August 1864, we find Lincoln giving a speech to the 166th Ohio Infantry Regiment.

The president told the listening soldiers, quote, I happen temporarily to occupy this big white house. I'm a living witness that anyone of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

End quote.

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