LINCOLN’S SOURCE
One of the things that has surprised scholars about Abraham Lincoln is that a man of the people, without the education of the schools, should have been able to write English that is marvelous in its clarity and simplicity, in its dignity and majesty. The Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural straightway passed into the list of classics in our language. One explanation is the source from which Lincoln learned his speech. As a boy and as a man he possessed and read the Bible until the spirit of its simple dignity passed into his own words, and its phrases were fixed in his memory for effective use when he was an adult. From Sunshine Magazine, February, 1973
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