Sarah r haber biography of abraham lincoln

On the winter morning of January 31, , Abraham Lincoln stepped inside a secluded farmhouse seemingly adrift on the vast Illinois prairie. The president-elect had left his hometown of Springfield only once in the eight months since garnering the Republican presidential nomination—in order to finally meet his running mate, Hannibal Hamlin, in person—but he had one special goodbye that he needed to deliver in person before departing Illinois for his inauguration.

Inside that cozy farmhouse tucked underneath a blanket of snow, Lincoln bent down his lanky frame and embraced the wizened woman he called “Mother,” not the woman who gave birth to him, however, but the stepmother who helped to set him on the path to the White House.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who gave birth to the Great Emancipator on February 12, , had instilled the virtues of honesty and compassion in her son and sowed the seeds of his intellectual curiosity.

Although lacking a formal education of her own, Nancy Lincoln impresse