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5 tributes to Abraham Lincoln from literary greats

Here, in honor of the 150th anniversary of the death of Abraham Lincoln, are comments from five literary greats found in “The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now,” published by The Library of America.

3. Walt Whitman, writing about Abraham Lincoln

  • By Danny Heitman

“They pass’d me once very close, and I saw the president in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, happened to be directed steadily in my eye. He bow’d and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this man’s face. There is something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed.”

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