Hundreds of books have been written (and are still being written) about Abraham Lincoln. But in the annals of Lincoln history, Thomas Lincoln, Abraham’s father, is a largely neglected figure. He rates a few paragraphs in an otherwise large biography and has served as a quick backdrop to the birth and childhood of our sixteenth president. Early Lincoln biography did not consider Thomas worthy of much mention. William Herndon set the pattern for how Thomas has been viewed historically. Thomas was seen as “roving and shiftless”, lazy beyond repair. Thomas was said to be uneducated and against education. He was portrayed as mentally and physically slow, “careless, inert, and dull”. He was the obstacle Abraham overcame to become great. That view of Thomas Lincoln is wrong. Thomas was not dull or inert or lazy. He lived in a different path from that chosen by his illustrious son but he was not an obstacle his son had to overcome. Because of this view, many will consider this volume to be revisionist history. In a sense, it is. It will revise the standard view of Thomas based on the historical record available and place him as he was in the events and time in which he lived. However, it is not revisionist in the negative sense that wording often suggests. It is not built from twisting events or rewriting timeframes to make history into something it was not. Thomas Lincoln: Abraham’s Father will correct the old and errant understanding of Thomas Lincoln and show him the man he truly was. It will not enlarge him into something he was not nor will it lower him to be what many have thought him. Lincoln history has a gap in not having the story of Thomas Lincoln readily available. Hopefully this volume will open the doors to taking a new and serious look at the father who raised and shaped Abraham Lincoln’s early life.

Thomas Lincoln, born in 1778, conquered the wilderness, built cabins and furniture, and supported his family as a farmer and carpenter. But his most important job was helping to raise Abraham Lincoln, who would become the sixteenth president of the United States of America. His story reveals what the American experience was like for those who settled the West leading up to the nations pre-Civil War period. He set an example of honesty, morality, hard work, diligence, and good humorall traits that were also associated with his son, Abraham, known as Honest Abe. Charles H. Coleman, Ph.D., the former Chair of the Department of History at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois, and his daughter, Mary Coleman, explore Thomas Lincolns life in detailstarting with his ancestors in England to his death in 1851. Despite the mythology that grew up around Abraham Lincoln, at the time of his fathers death, the family owned as much if not more than many of their neighbors. Success did not come easy, but Thomas Lincoln established the foundation that allowed his son to become a man who will always be remembered.

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Excerpt from Thomas Lincoln, the Father of Abraham Lincoln There follows a list of names with amounts ranging from three pounds down. Some are marked paid! During 1782 Captain A b r a h a m bought about 2800 more acres of land, some of it on the Green River and some of it on the Licking River. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Based primarily on long-neglected manuscript and newspaper sources--and especially on reminiscences of people who knew him--this psychobiography casts new light on Lincoln. Burlingame uses a blend of Freudian and Jungian theory to interpret the psyche of the 16th president.

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