ABRAHAM LINCOLN [ 1809 – 1865 ]

"If any personal description is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet four inches nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds, dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes – no other marks or brands recollected."

This is what the 16th President of the United States of America said when asked to describe himself. The Abraham Lincoln of the Prairies was a man of marked individuality. Standing six feet four, his figure loomed in any crowd, while the rugged face bespoke a pioneer origin and an early life of toil and poverty. The craggy brow, tousled hair, drooping eyelids, melancholy grey eyes, large nose and chin, and sunken, wrinkled cheeks produced an effect not easily forgotten.

It is doubtful whether any other leader could have matched him in dramatizing the war to the popular mind, in avoiding domestic and international complications and in courageously persisting in the face of almost unendurable discouragements. Not inappropriately, he has become a symbol both of American Democracy and the Union.