Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1 of 2)

Sandburg’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln is detailed, expressive, poignant, and at many times, repetitive and rambling. In the Prairie Years Sandburg, despite filling the book with long and meandering passages, has an overall lyrical language which is to be expected from a writer who is a talented poet first and foremost. He introduces our nation’s sixteenth president as being a captivating and complicated human being long before Lincoln entered the White House. Sandburg starts Lincoln's story by portraying him as a quiet and sensitive child whose dreams were very important to him; catching the symbolisms of life at an early age. Later, as an adult, Lincoln would see his dreams and symbolisms as a connection to his future. As a show more teenager, learning became Lincoln’s obsession. He was said to always have a book in his hand; that he was constantly reading. I have an image of him studying big law books while plowing his father’s fields. All that book reading didn't mean Lincoln was a soft sissy, though. Lincoln was the Superman of his day. As Sandburg frequently points out, because Abe was so tall and strong with “bulldog courage,” people were constantly challenging him to foot races, wrestling matches, and fist fights: anything to prove their strength against him. Sandburg seems proud to report most times these challengers lost.
In the midst of industry's wheels just starting to turn, slavery was seen as a profitable business. At the same time, at the age of twenty-three, Lincoln’s political wheels were just starting to turn as well. He wasn’t interested in drinking or fishing. He wanted to continue to learn the law. He became a postmaster so he could have access to newspaper. In the first installment of Sandburg’s biography, we learn Lincoln grew into a complicated man with many sides. Lincoln the storyteller, always telling jokes and stories. Lincoln the neighbor, ready to help a friend, stranger, or animal in need. Lincoln the silent and sad, afraid to carry a pocketknife for fear of harming himself. Sandburg quotes Lincoln as once saying, “I stay away because I am conscious I should not know how to behave myself” (p 22). show less

1060 Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years Volume One, by Carl Sandburg (read 11 Jul 1970) This is the first of six volumes by Sandburg on Lincoln. It takes Lincoln up to about 1850. It is good, but I miss the footnotes and the trappings of a real biography. So I won't go on--now--to volume II. Sandburg is no lawyer--I should read a book on Lincoln the lawyer. But the picture evoked of the early West in Lincoln's time is a strange and poignant one. One wonders how Lincoln could be the great man he was: what elements in him caused it? Even a poet:
"My childhood's home I see again
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There's pleasure in it too.
O Memory! thou midway world
Twixt earth and paradise,
Where things decayed show more and loved ones lost
In dreamy shadows rise." show less

Written with an uquestioned love of Lincoln, but much of it is fiction.

Donated by Professor Donald J. Berthrong