The posters in this collection document propagandistic and informational posters created by the United States government during World War I, 1914-1918. Topics covered include war-related themes such as the U.S. Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps campaigns to sell war bonds as part of an effort to finance World War I.
The posters in this collection document propagandistic and informational posters created by the United States government during World War I, 1914-1918. Topics covered include war-related themes such as the U.S. Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps campaigns to sell war bonds as part of an effort to finance World War I.
The posters in this collection document propagandistic and informational posters created by the United States government during World War I, 1914-1918. Topics covered include war-related themes such as the U.S. Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps campaigns to sell war bonds as part of an effort to finance World War I.
The posters in this collection document propagandistic and informational posters created by the United States government during World War I, 1914-1918. Topics covered include war-related themes such as the U.S. Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps campaigns to sell war bonds as part of an effort to finance World War I.
He first saw the light in a miserable hovel in Kentucky, on a farm consisting of a few barren acres in a dreary neighborhood; his father a typical “poor Southern white,” shiftless and improvident, without ambition for himself or his children, constantly looking for a new piece of land on which he might make a living without much work; his mother, in her youth handsome and bright, grown prematurely coarse in feature an soured in mind by daily toil and care; the whole household squalid, cheerless, and utterly void of elevating inspirations. Only when the family had “moved” into the malarious backwoods of Indiana, the mother had died, and a stepmother, a woman of thrift and energy, had taken charge of the children, the shaggy-headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old, “began to feel like a human being”. Hard work was his early lot. When a mere boy he had to help in supporting the family, either on his father’s clearing, or hired out to other farmers to plough, or dig ditches, or chop wood, or drive ox teams; occasionally also to “tend the baby” when the farmer’s wife was otherwise engaged.
But his standing before posterity will not be exalted by mere praise of his virtues and abilities, nor by any concealment of his limitations and faults. The stature of the great man, one of whose peculiar charms consisted in his being so unlike all other great men, will rather lose than gain by the idealization which so easily runs into the commonplace. For it was distinctly the weird mixture of qualities and forces in him, of the lofty with the common, the ideal with the uncouth, of that which he had become with that which he had not ceased to be, that made him so fascinating a character among his fellow men, gave him his singular power over their minds and hearts, and fired him to be the greatest leader in the greatest crisis of our national life. His was indeed a marvelous growth. The statesman or the military hero born and reared in a log cabin is a familiar figure in American history; but we may search in vain among our celebrities for one whose origin and early life equaled Abraham Lincoln’s wretchedness.
As the state of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up passes away, the world will read with increasing wonder of the man who, not only of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest and most unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of power unprecedented in our history; who was the gentlest and most peace-loving of mortals, unable to see any creature suffer without a pang in his own breast, and suddenly found himself called to conduct the greatest and bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power of government when stern resolution and relentless force were the order of the day, and then won and ruled the popular mind and heart by the tender sympathies of his nature; who was a cautious conservative by temperament and mental habit, and led the most sudden and sweeping social revolution of our time; who, preserving his homely speech and rustic manner even in the most conspicuous position of that period, drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur; who, in his heart the best friend of the defeated South, was murdered because a crazy fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy; who, while in power, was beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional passion and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and foe gathered to praise him – which they have since never ceased to do – as one of the greatest of Americans and the best of men.