Lincoln's Christianity by Michael Burkhimer

[maharba]

Lincoln and Darwin were born the same day. Charles Darwin to moderate wealth and privilege, Lincoln to grim circumstances often not far from starvation and poverty. Darwin was an excellent rider and huntsman, a dead shot with a rifle from a running horse. On Darwin's travels the coast of South America, he had no compunction about shooting thousands of birds and animals, some he knew were very rare. Lincoln had a dislike for personally killing anything. Both men were shrewd politicians and knew how to manipulate folks to advance themselves. The first edition of Origin of Species came out November 1859. ORIGIN went through 6 revised editions over the years, and is a very boring, dry book to read. It only gets interesting when Darwin will cite someone in an anecdote raising or breeding plants or animals. I think surveys taken show that very few past or modern professors have ever actually read Origin of Species. If Lincoln ever looked at Darwin's On the Origin of Species, my guess is that Lincoln would have just skimmed it and found not much of interest to him.