"Lincoln the Poet" and other Resources

LINCOLN THE POET

"As perfect a poem as ever was written" is Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Aside from its tremendous message, its vision and injunction upon the future, it possesses the rhythm, cadence, phonetic euphony and rhetorical symbolism of the great poem. One of the scholars of the country has written that speech as it would appear in the mechanical form of poetry. Without a change in word or punctuation, the speech, in form to emphasize the poetic qualities, appears as follows:

Four score and seven years ago
Our fathers brought forth on this continent
A new nation,
Conceived in liberty,
And dedicated to the proposition
That all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
Testing whether that nation,
Or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
Can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field
As a final resting-place
For those who here have their lives
That that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper
That we should do this.

But, in a larger sense,
We cannot dedicate --
We cannot consecrate --
We cannot hallou --
This ground.
The brave men, living and dead,
Who struggled here
Have consecrated it far above our poor power
To add or detract.
The world will little know
Nor long remember
What we say here,
But it can never forget
What they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather
To be dedicated here to the unfinished work
Which they who fought here have so nobly carried on.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated
To the great task remaining before us --
That from these honored dead
We take increased devotion to that cause
For which they gave the last full measure of devotion;
That we here highly resolve
That these dead shall not have died in vain;
That this nation, under God,
Shall have a new birth of freedom;
And that government of the people,
By the people, and for the people,
Shall not perish from the earth.

From the Oakland Tribune - Feb. 12, 1924

Abraham Lincoln biography (Great page for younger students.) - Garden of Praise

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Book on Google - Free to Read

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Geared toward younger students - every page has a colorful illustration (google link) This book would be a good one to print and staple together -- but you can read it online, too.

The Story of Abraham Lincoln - only 64 pages - not a lot of illustration, but good for elementary grade students - maybe 3rd grade and up, or read aloud. (google link) Here is a sample (humorous) passage:

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This on purports to be a book written in one-syllable words, obviously for the younger set. (google link) It is, sort of -- See for yourself:

See, any word with more than one syllable was broken up by hyphens into single syllables!

Last book, The Words of Abraham Lincoln for use in Schools. (google link) Here is the first part of the preface, explaining part of the book's purpose:

JUST ADDED: The Story of Abraham Lincoln - from the History Primer by Oscar Gerson

 Printable - FREE download - word doc

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Do you have any favorite Abraham Lincoln resources? If so, let us know in the comments.