Abraham Lincoln biography (continues...)

There were three children - the oldest was Sarah and the youngest was Thomas, who died in childhood. In the middle was Abraham, born February 12, 1809. When Abraham wasn't needed for chores at home, he attended school in a log schoolhouse nearby, where he picked up a smattering of reading, writing and arithmetic. He attended school, he said, "by littles" - a little here and a little there. Mostly, he educated himself. He was famous among his neighbors for the way he would walk miles - sometimes as many as twenty - just to borrow and return a book. His favorite books were Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, and Aesop's Fables. He also borrowed a history of the United States and some school texts. Later he developed a passion for Shakespeare's plays, long passages of which he could recite from memory. He also studied the Bible and always kept a copy of it on his desk at the White House. At night, when the terrible stress of his responsibilities kept him from sleeping, he would flip through the Bible and read different passages to himself. One of the books he read as a youth, that left an enduring mark, was a biography of George Washington that detailed the country's struggle for liberty. Lincoln said later: "I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for."

When Lincoln was eight, his family moved to Indiana, where there were better land deals, and no slavery. Lincoln's parents belonged to a Baptist church that condemned slavery and from the beginning, said Lincoln, he was "naturally anti-slavery and could remember no time when I did not so think and feel."

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