1860: Lincoln Visits Five Points.

[David Lockmiller]

Here's a different version of the historical truth:

The newspapers of Springfield informed the people that Mr. Lincoln had addressed the ragamuffins at the Five Points Mission. Those intimate with him were accustomed to calling him "Abe;" in like manner he abbreviated their names.

"Well Abe," one of his neighbors said upon his return, "I see that you have been making a speech to Sunday-school children."

"Yes;" sit down, Jim, and I'll tell you about it. On Sunday morning Washburne said 'Let's go down to the Five Points Mission.' I was much interested in what I saw, Jim. The superintendent, Mr. Pease, came and shook hands with us, and Washburne introduced me to him."

He spoke to the children, and then I was urged to speak. I told him that I did not know anything about talking to Sunday-schools, but Mr. Pease said that many of the children were homeless and friendless, and I thought of the time that I had been pinched by terrible poverty. And so I told them that I had been poor; I remembered when my toes stuck out through my broken shoes, when my arms were out at the elbow, when I shivered with the cold. I told them that there was only one rule -- always to do the very best you can. I told them that I always tried to do the very best I could, and that if they would follow that rule they would get on somehow.

"When I got through, Mr. Pease said it was just the thing they needed. When the school was dismissed all the teachers came up and shook my hand and thanked me for it, although I didn't know that I was saying anything of any account. I never heard anything that touched me as one of the songs they sung. Here is one of their songbooks." Mr. Lincoln took a little hymnal from his pocket and read one of the hymns. As he read his lips became tremulous and tears rolled down his cheeks.(")

Doubtless memory went back once more to the floorless cabin of his birthplace and to the lonely grave of his mother in the Indiana forest -- to the poverty and hardship of his boyhood. Looking into the faces of the poor and friendless children touched his heart as nothing else could have done, and awakened his tenderest sympathies.

Abraham Lincoln, by Charles Carleton Coffin, 1893, New York, Harper & Brothers, pages 179-80.