Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of United States was born today February 12 in the year 1809. He was the tallest President, physically (6 feet 3 inches), literally, morally and intellectually, and definitely the tallest in public esteem and regard.
He was also the first President to sport a beard though not the only one. And the credit for encouraging him to raise a beard goes to a small girl of 11 from Westfield, New York- Grace Bedell.
This is what Grace wrote to him:
Oct 15. 1860
Hon A B Lincoln
Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture. . . I am a little girl only eleven years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you won’t think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. . . I have got 4 brother’s and part of them will vote for you any way and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband’s to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is a going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try and get everyone to vote for you that I can. . . I must not write any more answer this letter right off
Good bye
Grace Bedell
Lincoln took Grace’s advice, won the election, and thanked her in person when his train stopped at Westfield on February 16, 1861 on his way to Washington.
The event was reported by The New York World, thus:
On reaching [Westfield, Mr Lincoln] said that if that young lady was in the crowd he should be glad to see her. There was a momentary commotion, in the midst of which an old man, struggling through the crowd, approached, leading his daughter . . . whom he introduced to Mr. Lincoln as his Westfield correspondent. Mr. Lincoln stooped down and kissed the child, and talked with her for some minutes.
Her advice had not been thrown away upon the rugged chieftain. A beard of several months’ growth covers (perhaps adorns) the lower part of his face. The young girl’s peachy cheek must have been tickled with a stiff whisker, for the growth of which she was herself responsible.
Abraham Lincoln’s legacy is unequalled and inimitable. His greatest achievements are seen as ending the Civil War, abolishing slavery and developing the economy. But more than anything else, it was his magnanimity and generosity and forgiveness that has endeared him to masses and the elite alike. His Gettysburg address is well known but read this address made at the end of Civil War that brings out the greatness so eloquently of this man.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
But Lincoln got to serve only one month and eleven days of his second term before being shot and killed while attending a theatre performance. After shooting Lincoln, the assassin, a famous and popular stage actor, John Wilkes Booth swung himself over the balustrade and leapt to the stage, shouting, ’Sic sempter tyrannis”.
scribo ad LX 