Editors note 5/9/24

The Lincoln Presidential Foundation brought preeminent Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer to Springfield this week to expound on his new book, Brought Forth on this Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration, and the role Springfield played in shaping his emerging views. Early in his political career he, like Mary, had little use for immigrants, especially the Irish, while he concentrated on his antislavery efforts. But as he gathered friends in Springfield among the Germans, the Irish and the Jews, and growing political support, not only from immigrants but from former anti-immigrant Know-Nothings, his views changed. In 1863, soon after his Gettysburg Address, he recognized immigrants as a ready source of laborers needed for farms, factories and mines. In his 1864 Message to Congress, he saw immigrants as God-sent: "I regard our immigrants as one of the principal replenishing streams which are appointed by Providence to repair the ravages of internal war and its wastes of national strength and health." –Fletcher Farrar, editor