David Herbert Donald's Lincoln about Abraham Lincoln

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Lincoln

U.S. History AP 1

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David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is a biography of our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln. At the age of twenty one, he was sure he did not want to be like his father Thomas Lincoln, an uneducated farmer, so he left his fathers house permanently. He had many jobs, learned many lessons, and made both friends and enemies, all which helped him to become one of the greatest presidents of the United States of America during the time the country had split, the Civil War. Thoroughly researched and excellently written, this biography comes alive and shows us what really happened during the early to mid-nineteenth century and it still puts us in the point of view of our former president, using the information and ideas available to him.

In Lincoln, I believe the thesis would be: Abraham Lincoln was a man who was controlled by circumstances rather than determining his own destiny. Lincoln grew up at a farm and if nature intended he would have died in a farm too, but during the times that Lincoln grew up, extraordinary things were happening to the nation in politics and the society. He always despised of farm work and loved to read. "Once he got the hang of it, he could never get enough. (p. 30)" The first books he read were brought from Kentucky when his father re-married to Sarah Bush Johnston. There weren't many books available to Lincoln so he "...read carefully rather than extensively. (p.30)" At a young age, Lincoln was exposed to anti-slavery sentiment His parents moved away from a church because of slavery, even thought Lincoln was never interested in religion. He said once said "When I do good, I feel good, and when I do bad, I feel bad, and that's my religion. (Quote DB)" In 1816 Lincoln's father went to Little Pigeon Creek in Perry County in Indiana to look for a good spot to construct a house. He constructed a "half-faced camp, a rough shelter, with no floor, about fourteen feet square, enclosed on three sides, but open on the fourth. (p. 25)" Years later Lincoln said that they left Kentucky "partly on account of slavery, but chiefly on account of the difficulty in land tiles in Kentucky. (p. 23)" Rapidly growing railroads and canals helped populate the rest of the continent. Lincoln was also affected by family issues.

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