Presents the life of the Civil War president, detailing his childhood, his education, career as a lawyer and legislator, his marriage, political campaigns, presidential years, and assassination.

"For thirty years and more I planned to make a certain portrait of Abraham Lincoln. It would sketch the country lawyer and prairie politician who was intimate with the settlers of the Knox County neighborhood where I grew up as a boy, and where I heard the talk of men and women who had eaten with Lincoln, given him a bed overnight, heard his jokes and lingo, remembered his silences and his mobile face"--Preface.