200 Years Later, Lincoln Still Resonates
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation …
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.
Two hundred years later, his legacy still endures - and so does this nation.
Read more of Glor on Lincoln at Couric & Co. blog.
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."
