No googling please.
Who said this about Abraham Lincoln?
"In bodily form he was above the average, and so in intellect; the two were in symmetry. Not highly cultivated, he had a native genius far above the average of his fellows. Every fountain of his heart was ever overflowing with the 'milk of human kindness.'"
That was a quote from a sales slogan developed by the Sangamon Dairy in the 1870's by "George the Milkman" who was immortalized in song by George Melly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFkh6QBlq48
Oops, sorry Roger I googled that so I will have to retract my answer.
Good guess, Michael, but incorrect. Gene, I am afraid you are not on the right track.
Hint #1: Lincoln knew this man before becoming President. They met each other again while Lincoln was President.
Hint #1.5: The correct person has been mentioned before on this forum.
Roger,
Does clue #1 relate in any way to New Salem?
Best
Rob
(12-16-2020, 10:25 AM)Rob Wick Wrote: [ -> ]Roger,
Does clue #1 relate in any way to New Salem?
Best
Rob
Nope. The two men first met each other in the 1840s.
OK, then let's get this out of the way.
Joshua Speed?
Best
Rob
Rob, it's not Speed.
Hint #2: The right answer may come as something of a surprise.
Well this is going to be wrong, but Stephen Douglas?
Rob
Rob, that is a logical guess based on my clue. However, it's incorrect. IMO, the right person is even a greater surprise than Douglas would be had he been the correct answer.
Bingo! Kudos, Gene. Yes, it was indeed the former Vice-President of the Confederacy who said this of Lincoln. The two men knew each other from their Congressional years (30th Congress), and then met again at the Hampton Roads Conference.
Stephens' quote is from 1878.
To be fair, Stephens continued:
"So much for him personally. From my attachment to him, so much the deeper was the pang in my own breast as well as of millions at the horrible manner of his 'taking off.' That was the climax of our troubles and the spring from which came afterward 'unnumbered woes.' But of those events no more now. Widely as we differed on public questions and policies, yet as a friend I may say:
'No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode;
There they alike in trembling hope repose,
The bosom of his Father and his God.'
No googling please.
What is the name of the person who wrote the following?
How does this man compare with the acknowledged "Father of his country?" Washington was modeled on the best Saxon and Franklin of the age of the Stuarts (rooted in the Elizabethan period)—was essentially a noble Englishman, and just the kind needed for the occasions and the times of 1776-'83. Lincoln, underneath his practicality, was far less European, far more Western, original, essentially non-conventional, and had a certain sort of out-door or prairie stamp.
Roger.
In my reading on Sandburg I came across this quote in one of Walt Whitman's works, so that is my guess.
Best
Rob