PIVOTAL PRESIDENTS PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP ABRAHAM LINCOLN Edited by Michael Anderson Britannica Educational Publishing IN ASSOCIATION WITH ROSEN EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
Introduction A life-sized bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln stands in front of the entrance to the New York Historical Society With the stovepipe hat the statue is nearly 7 feet 2 meters tall Hope Lourie Killcoyne 6
For most Americans conjuring a mental image of Abraham Lincoln is not that hard to do The figure is tall Lanky There’s the hat The beard The wry smile and the glint in the eye Trying to visualize other presidents though is another story Aside from recent leaders and some near-mythic early ones Washington Jefferson very few strike the visual chord that Lincoln does Admit it try to picture Benjamin Harrison and the slate is blank But Lincoln was not just a memorable face Despite the fact that all told Abe Lincoln the 16th president of the United States of America spent less than a year in school he was a brilliant orator issuing profound and precise sentiments that could not but com mand the attention of his listeners be they sympathetic to his politics or not Consider this prescient passage from one of his most famous speeches delivered in 1858 two years before he was elected president and nearly three years before the start of the Civil War A house divided against itself cannot stand I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free I do not expect the Union to be dissolved I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect 7
