200 Years Later, Lincoln Still Resonates

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation …

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Across the country today, Abraham Lincoln's Legacy is coming out in words, immortalized in his most famous speech: The Gettysburg Address, CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor reports.

Two hundred years since his birth, Lincoln's well-worn story still fascinates. More than 15,000 books mine the story of our 16th president.

He's an icon - honored this week with a new look on our penny and a stamp, in a performance at the newly restored Ford Theater, in exhibits across the country.

"I'm fascinated by anything that humanizes Lincoln the man," said Jonathan Mann, a Lincoln collector.

Mann organized one of the largest exhibits in the country, at New York's Federal Hall, with some items never before seen to the public - from an inaugural ball dance card to a ticket to a pivotal campaign speech.

"That's the only known ticket to the Cooper Institute," he said, showing off the ticket. "This put Lincoln on the national stage."

But it was the Emancipation Proclamation that put Lincoln on history's stage. It freed slaves, his signature feat.

"It's what he most wanted to be remembered for, what he was most proud of," said Larry Sellers, the Lincoln curator of the Library of Congress. "Not saving the union. Humanity. He really believed in the principal of equality."

Between Lincoln's election in November 1860 and the time he entered office in March, 1861, seven states had already seceded from the union. By its end in 1865, America's deadliest war had taken more than 600,000 lives. Through it all, Lincoln bent, but never broke.

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Read more of Glor on Lincoln at Couric & Co. blog.

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Two hundred years later, his legacy still endures - and so does this nation.

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This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

[evian_ycnan]

Yes, Lincoln resonates.

Lincoln understood the place of government. He understood that a man could make his way without the Union, but that a slave couldn`t.

We cannot, each of us, test our peanut products, but the FDA can and must. Caveate Emptor may work with a shoddy shovel, but not a poisoned can of peaches. That is what Lincoln knew.

The government is there to do what we cannot as individuals so that we can remain individuals.

Lincoln understood that -- too bad the Republicans lost his insight by neglecting oversight and regulation.

[albertw40]

We went to a display yesterday about Abraham Lincoln and the Czar, both of whom freed slaves, and both of whom gave their lives for it. The artifacts reminded me. People who want to do good things often face massive opposition and anger. Barack Obama needs to take the example of those two men. If he wants to help those who have been forgotten, indeed those who have been stabbed in the back, the last eight years, he has to keep on course, to make strong decisions in the face of opposition.

[gosukabug]

If Obama turns out to be half the man Lincoln was and not just a bunch of talk this country should start to turn itself around.