Reply #10: He did indeed. He was a voracious reader, and is known to have [View All]

[NNadir]

travelled great distances to borrow books and to have worked hard labor in order to obtain them. His education consisted entirely of what were known as "blab schools," and he is said to have had two years of formal education.

His father, with whom Lincoln had a contentious relationship, was illiterate, but he was encouraged by his stepmother, Sarah Johnson Lincoln, to learn to read.

The most commonly available book on the frontier was the Bible, which Lincoln read extensively, although he is not generally thought to have been very religious in his early life. Lincoln was also a tremendous fan, as a boy, of Parson Weem's biography of George Washington.

Lincoln often shirked his youthful farm duties to read - much to the disgust of his father and some of his employers. He actually was seen reading books while plowing the fields.

Lincoln also read mathematics and taught himself enough about the subject to have worked as a surveyor. He had a keen appreciation for science and technology as well. One of his most famous cases - although he was ultimately not the major litigant - was the McCormick reaper case, for which he had done considerable work of a technical nature. The primary lawyer in the case, however, treated Lincoln with contempt, and kept him more or less on the sidelines. That lawyer was William Stanton, who would go on to serve as Lincoln's best Secretary of War. It was Stanton who intoned, over Lincoln's death bed, the famous words, "Now he belongs to the ages."

This post comes off the top of my head.