“Granny Woman,” Nancy Walters remembered:
It was Saturday afternoon when Tom Lincoln sent over and asked me to come. They sent for Nancy’s two aunts, Mis’ Betsy Sparrow and Mis’ Polly Friend. I was there before them, and we all had quite a spell to wait, and we got everything ready. Nancy had a good feather-bed under her; it wasn’t a goose-feather bed, hardly anyone had that kind then, but good hen feathers.
Nancy had about as hard a time as most women, I reckon, easier than some and maybe harder than a few. The baby was born just about sunup, on Sunday morning. Nancy’s two aunts took the baby and washed him and dressed him, and I looked after Nancy. And I remember after the baby was born, Tom came and stood beside the bed with that sort of hang-dog look that a man has, sort of guilty like, but mighty proud, and he says to me, ‘Are you sure she’s all right, Mis’ Walters?’ And Nancy kind of stuck out her hand and reached for his, and said, ‘Yes, Tom, I’m all right.’ And then she said, ‘You’re glad it’s a boy, Tom, aren’t you? So am I.'”
And Dennis swung the baby back and forth, keeping up a chatter about how tickled he was to have a new cousin to play with. The baby screwed up the muscles of its face and began crying with no let-up.
Dennis turned to Betsy Sparrow, handed her the baby and said to her, “Aunt, take him! He’ll never amount to much.”
So on that 12th of February, 1809, was the birth of a boy they named Abraham after his grandfather who had been killed by Indians — born in silence and pain from a wilderness mother on a bed of perhaps cornhusks and perhaps hen feathers — with perhaps a laughing child prophecy later that he would “never come to much.”
The above quote from Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln is one of my favorite quotes about Lincoln. Yesterday, we posted and discussed Aaron Copland’s A Lincoln Portrait. In that work, when you hear the great words, the building music, and Gregory Peck’s strong voice, it is easy to think of Lincoln as super human. We have this perception that he was something like Superman, flying around in perfection winning the war and freeing the slaves, when the truth is more complex.
A Lincoln Portrait, the Lincoln Memorial, and other monuments to the man are the reasons I like the story about the crying baby. The story reminds us that Lincoln was a human who dealt with many of the same problems we do, and then some. In his own home, he faced depression, marital problems, and the loss of a child while the nation was coming apart. He was imperfect, he had flaws, and he was sometimes wrong (such as early support for colonization of slaves).
Yet, for us today, it is good to be reminded that Lincoln was not perfect. The reminder that Abraham Lincoln was human like us serves two purposes. First, it makes us appreciate even more what Lincoln accomplished because he was not Superman. Second, because Lincoln was once a crying baby just like we all were, it reminds us that we may aspire to a little bit of greatness in our everyday lives too.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln.
Battle Cry Of Freedom 2 (Jacqueline Schwab) (from A Civil War Soundtrack) (click to play)
Bonus Birthplace Information: The above photo is a cabin enshrined at Lincoln’s birthplace in Hodgenville, Kentucky. I have visited the location several times over the years. Unfortunately, they do not believe the cabin is the actual one where Lincoln was born, but it is a similar one that was found in the area at the time.
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