Things Lincoln never said

[Linda Anderson]

The Daily Beast has an interesting article today titled "Did Abraham Lincoln Actually Say That Obama Quote?" by James R. Cornelius, "curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in Springfield, Illinois." President Obama quoted Lincoln in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention.

"'While I’m proud of what we’ve achieved together,' Obama told the assembled in Charlotte, 'I’m far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, ‘I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.'"

Cornelius writes that "Noah Brooks, scribe for the Sacramento Union, writing in the Harper’s Weekly for July 1865 (3 months after Lincoln had died), reported that the deceased once said this, at an unspecified date: 'I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day...'

"Don and Virginia Fehrenbacher tirelessly, for years, assembled the Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford Univ. Press, 1994) as recorded later by people who knew him (or said they did). The Brooks gem about 'my knees' (p. 50) got a likelihood grade of D..."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...quote.html