Theodore Roosevelt: "My Great Hero is Abraham Lincoln"

June 13, 1906

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Theodore Roosevelt: "My Great Hero is Abraham Lincoln"
Typed Letter Signed
2 pages | SMC 1276

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      Background

      Even heroes have heroes and Theodore Roosevelt’s, he says here, was Lincoln:
       
      I am mighty glad you like what I have been doing in the governmental field.  I do not have to tell you that my great hero is Abraham Lincoln, and I have wanted while President to be the representative of the "plain people" in the sense that he was - not, of course, with the genius and power that he was, but according to my lights, along the same lines.
       
      Roosevelt’s regard for the “plain people”, like Lincoln’s for the “common people” of whom he famously said, God must have loved for He made so many of them, came together, fittingly, in Roosevelt’s proposal to put Lincoln’s image on the penny – an act of personal homage.
      Typed Letter Signed, as President, 2 pages, quarto, The White House, Washington, June 13, 1906. To W.W. Sewall in Maine
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      THE WHITE HOUSE,
      WASHINGTON.

      June 13, 1906.

      Friend William:

      Many thanks for your letter of the 10th instant. I am sorry to say it is evident that my boy will not be able to get up to Maine.  He has changed his plans about school and this will interfere.  I wish I could get up there with all my family.  That is a mighty attractive-looking "Hook Point Camp." No, I can't get up myself. I wish I could. 

      I am mighty glad you like what I have been doing in the governmental field. I do not have to tell you that my great hero is Abraham Lincoln, and I have wanted while President to be the representative of the "plain people" in the sense that he was - not, of course, with the genius and power that he was, but, according to my lights, along the same lines.

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      Page 2 transcript
      I am very sorry to hear about David's death.

      With regards to all your family, believe me,

      Faithfully yours,

      THEODORE ROOSEVELT


      Mr. W. W. Sewall,
      Island Falls, Maine.