The Lincoln Country in Pictures

The Isaac Golliher house.
By CARL and ROSALIE FRAZIER
HASTINGS HOUSE Publishers New York 22
The story of Abraham Lincoln is ever fresh. It appeals to the imagination and grips the vision of many people in various ways. Perhaps that is why millions of visitors make pilgrimages to the humble abodes in which he lived and the places he frequented. Photograph Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed by my fellow men, rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed.” — Address to Sangamon County, March 9, 1832.
Copyright © 1963, by Carl and Rosalie Frazier
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.
Published simultaneously in Canada by S. J. Reginald Saunders, Publishers, Toronto 2B
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-19173
Printed in the United States of America
We know it is no longer possible to add anything new to the written word about Lincoln. The hundreds of historians who have attempted to write the life of the Great Emancipator have covered every facet of it. Therefore, we have chosen to present our story of a by-gone day in a series of camera impressions, hoping to arouse in our readers an emotional sense of “present being.”
We have done this for two reasons: first, because Lincoln’s early frontier has achieved a factual and imaginative rebirth through loving care and painstaking efforts after having fallen into ruin for many years. Secondly, we believe as many historians do, that America owes much of the credit for its national character and institutions to the atmosphere of the early frontier. It was the appreciation of the role it played on the character of Lincoln that brought about the restoration of New Salem, Illinois, and those objects which were so closely associated with him. These objects are of special interest because it was among them that he moved slowly forward through a cycle of failures and successes before reaching the high place which destiny had reserved for him. No man in American history has started with so little and achieved so much.