Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Abe Lincoln was born in a log cabin, but his son built himself a mansion. Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's only child to survive to adulthood, built the Georgian Revival home, called Hildene, as a seasonal dream home for his wife, Mary Harlan Lincoln, and their children.
Robert Todd Lincoln was the oldest of President Abraham Lincoln's four sons and the only one to live to maturity. In contrast to his self-educated father, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard. After the Civil War, he became one of the most prominent lawyers in Chicago, and by virtue of his name became a factor in Republican politics.
As the Shakespearean actor Edmund Keane observed in another context, "[c]omedy is hard." Harder still is to be witty and amusing while at the same time being informative and thoughtful. Yet local author and editor Andrew Ferguson manages all this in a touching confessional of his boyhood fascination with our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.
