They ended up taking a cue from Harrison and staging a nice bit of political theater at the state-level convention in Decatur.Īccording to Rubenstein, Richard J. Abe’s backers looked for a way to reconnect their man with his genuinely humble roots. In 1860, Lincoln was eager to win the support of the Illinois delegates who would later attend the Republican National Convention in Chicago. It was a lesson not lost on those advising Lincoln. In 1840, presidential candidate William Henry Harrison, emphasizing what he claimed were long-standing ties to the common man (although he came from a family of Virginia aristocrats), had orchestrated what came to be known as the “log cabin campaign.” Harrison’s down-home strategy undoubtedly contributed to his successful run for the presidency. And lawyers were hardly more beloved then than now. But Abe had long since exchanged the rigors of his father’s farm to become a Springfield lawyer. This was a background that might have carried the day as the Republicans sought their presidential candidate in 1860. Those who knew him in his youth testified that once when Lincoln arrived in a new town, local rowdies challenged him to a wrestling match-which he won handily. And Abe had indeed been as lanky and strong as he was said to have been as a young man in the backwoods. Lincoln’s rustic childhood on the frontier, replete with the legendary hours spent studying by firelight, was entirely authentic. He had no need, however, to invent his back story. The object offers a reminder that there was a time when Abe Lincoln, a newcomer to politics, needed a prop that might underscore his humble roots and resonate with voters. A nine-inch, rough-hewn piece of wood, one of 60 artifacts on view through May 30 in the NMAH exhibition “Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life,” serves as an evocative footnote to an epic biography. With Lincoln, we can be forgiven for losing sight of the fact that he was also a politician, and in politics, legends rarely emerge spontaneously. The many tragedies of his life make him approachable.”

He is the president who moves us to the ideal that all men are created equal. “His mythic stories are all about perfection. “Washington is very unapproachable,” says Harry Rubenstein, chair of Politics and Reform at the National Museum of American History (NMAH). Lincoln, arguably more than Washington, embodies the American dream: an up-from-poverty hero who became a giant not only to Americans but to much of the world.

Remarkably, most of the stories that underlie Lincoln’s legacy seem grounded in fact (in contrast, for example, to the apocryphal tale of George Washington and his cherry tree, invented by biographer Parson Weems).

Every modern president aspires to emulate Abraham Lincoln, but few have wanted to be measured against him-a leader whose stature grew with the enormousness of the challenges he overcame, and whose violent death added the resonance of Greek tragedy to a historic life.

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