Excerpt from The Link, Vol. 25: A Protestant Magazine for Armed Forces Personnel; February, 1967

As the immigrants' son made his paper rounds, he heard some of the townsfolk tell of having known Abraham Lincoln before he ever went to Washington as President. Every year, too, this young chap would go to an anniversary cele bration of the great debate, where famous citizens from all over the country came to speak. The more this boy heard about the great American who sprung from the prairies, the more impressed he became. As time went on, a high and compelling purpose formed in his mind. He was resolved to write the story of his hero more fully and truthfully than it had ever been presented before.

Nowadays everybody knows how far Carl Sandburg has traveled since his far off paper-peddling days. No Pulitzer Prize ever seemed better deserved than the one which went to him a few years ago for his four volume work Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. His years of uphill strug gle were finally rewarded with enough leisure and security so he was able to carry out his long-cherished dream. None know better than the Lincoln scholars themselves what a master ly biography he produced.

Perhaps the most astonishing fact about Sandburg is that his own story is not unlike that of his great hero. His own folks were too, poor to provide him with a high school education, but that didn't stop him, for he devoured every book he could lay his hands on that told about Abraham Lincoln. At nineteen, when he said goodbye to his father and mother to go to work in the Kansas wheat fields, he car ried in his hip-pocket a copy of a poem which he proceeded to learn by heart. Its title? One can almost guess it. It was Lincoln's favorite, Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?

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