Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In the canon of Great Presidents -- only four of them according to Mount Rushmore and I have my doubts about two of them -- Abraham Lincoln stands out. But what's the AE thing about him?
Well, he's the only person I've ever come across, in life or in history, who could effortlessly come up with an amusing anecdote to fit any situation he found himself in. There is no doubt about this gift--it is attested to innumerable times in accounts of Lincoln's life. He could keep them coming for hours at an end, and did so all his adult life.
Nor were these aperçus laboriously crafted (or supplied by gag-writers) for use in set piece speeches, they were seemingly available spontaneously and endlessly to the Railsplitter himself to suit any and every occasion. Social or work, public or private.
| So I want to know where he got the anecdotes from. |
His reading matter rarely strayed far from lawbooks and improving literature but in any case no amount of mugging up on 'books of anecdotes' would cover all situations and circumstances he found himself in.
The only theory I have seen put forward is that the child Lincoln used to listen to his father, who apparently had the same habit, and 'stored them up'. This is not only ridiculous in itself--how could Honest Abe memorise the thousands (oh, yes) of anecdotes he later used as a circuit lawyer, a compulsive political office-seeker and a homespun president.
If true, in part or in whole, this just pushes the puzzle back a generation. Even in a heavily oral culture like the nineteenth-century American midwest, anecdotes are relatively few and far between. So where was Lincoln Snr's mother lode?
Yet facts are facts. Somehow, America's greatest president had the rare ability to coin anecdotes spontaneously and to order. It's the only explanation that fits. The one clue we have is that it appears to be genetic. The fact that the father was a complete ne'er-do-well points to it not being necessarily a useful trait but, if you want to be a great man, it's maybe worth finding out.
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