We know it is no longer possible to add anything new to the written word about Lincoln. The hundreds of historians who have attempted to write the life of the Great Emancipator have covered every facet of it. Therefore, we have chosen to present our story of a by-gone day in a series of camera impressions, hoping to arouse in our readers an emotional sense of “present being.”

We have done this for two reasons: first, because Lincoln’s early frontier has achieved a factual and imaginative rebirth through loving care and painstaking efforts after having fallen into ruin for many years. Secondly, we believe as many historians do, that America owes much of the credit for its national character and institutions to the atmosphere of the early frontier. It was the appreciation of the role it played on the character of Lincoln that brought about the restoration of New Salem, Illinois, and those objects which were so closely associated with him. These objects are of special interest because it was among them that he moved slowly forward through a cycle of failures and successes before reaching the high place which destiny had reserved for him. No man in American history has started with so little and achieved so much.

With a certain temerity then, we present our pictorial history of the environment in which Lincoln spent the most formative years of his life. It was from this frontier atmosphere and these frontier people that Lincoln acquired his uncanny understanding of how common folk think and the wisdom that enabled him to hold in his hands the ties that bound a people and made a nation.