This morning I went to the Lincoln Memorial before dawn. I got there and I

climbed up the huge marble steps to his statue and I looked east across the

National Mall, passed the Washington Monument, passed the Capitol Building. I

had actually planned for the opening of this episode to go there before the

day started, before the thousands of visitors showed up. Well it was still quiet

and to read part of the Gettysburg address or the second inaugural which are

both carved into the stone on the inner walls of the monument. But when I got

there it was just so peaceful. I changed my mind and I decided to just stand

quietly by his huge statue and to look out just the same way his eyes look out

from between the pillars to watch the pink spring sunrise. It had words of his

that were just running over and over through my head but they weren't the

soaring pros of either of those famous speeches. They were just these simple

four lines of a tiny poem that he wrote when he was a little boy. In the

home goes Abraham Lincoln his hand and his pen he will be good but God knows

when. This episode is about Lincoln's hand and his pen and just how good he was.

I'm Lily and cutting him with the Washington Post and I can't believe it's

here but it is this is the 16th episode of presidential.

How do I even begin to do a podcast about Lincoln? There are so many rich

important topics that I'm just going to have to skip over entirely even if I

were just going to read a timeline of facts that happened during Lincoln's

presidency even that would take longer than the time I've got. So my

apologies in advance for everything that's not going to be covered in this

...