Educating a Liberator

Upon spending a few minutes in the Abraham Lincoln Exhibition–Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian History Museum–I could not help but be attracted to the President’s story. His one-room log cabin house, His slave-owning in-laws, no “real education, and astounding accomplishments.

Lincoln’s formal education consisted of approximately 18 months of classes from several itinerant teachers; he was mostly self-educated and was an avid reader. Of his learning method to acquire these various skills, he said: “I learned with nobody.”

To his son Robert, upon hearing his intentions to go to Harvard Law School: “If you do, you should learn more than I ever did, but you will never have so good a time.”

Lincoln was an amateur inventor, a congressman, a small business owner (a general store), a postmaster, a riverboater, the county surveyor, a rail splitter, and a lawyer.

There is a lot to be learned from his example, beginning with the question: how much does it cost to educate a great future President?

Very little indeed.