Encyclopaedia of biography of illinois

ROBERT E. SHERWOOD 1938

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FURTHER READING

Abe Lincoln In Illinois presents a vision that fits in with the legends of the sixteenth president that have been told to generations of American school children, but it gives these legends a human face.

The play deals with Lincoln’s formative years. It focuses in particular on Lincoln’s growth from a shy, uneducated backwoodsman who was more willing to accept the enslavement of blacks than to accept war to the man who would lead half of the nation against the other half in the name of justice.

When Sherwood’s play was brought to the stage in 1938, its parallels to the international political situation were obvious. Adolf Hitler had established himself as the dictator of Germany and had started his expansion across Europe, and the people of America, an ocean away, found themselves faced with questi