Hey everyone, thanks for downloading the 17th episode of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy.

Hello y'all.

Welcome to the podcast.

First of all, sorry this episode is late, but hopefully this being a long-ish show will

help you forgive us for being overdue.

In fact, we'll see how things shake out, but this may turn out to be our longest episode

yet.

Okay, so anyway, as you probably already know, this episode is the second installment of

a special two-part biographical sketch of Abraham Lincoln.

We wanted to bring his life up to speed with where we are on the podcast timeline.

And so with the last show, we covered Mr. Lincoln's life from his birth in Kentucky in February

1809, up to his move to Springfield in April 1837.

And in this episode, we'll go from 1837 up to 1858, which is when the famous Lincoln

Douglas debates took place.

And those debates will be the subject of the next upcoming episode.

But in this show, we've divided the material up into three sections.

Lincoln the lawyer, Lincoln gets married, and Lincoln the politician.

So with that introduction, Abraham Lincoln was 28 years old when he pulled up stakes in

New Salem in an April 1837 move to Springfield, a bustling metropolis of 1,500 people.

As we mentioned near the end of the last show, Lincoln joined the law office of John Todd

...