An 11-Year-Old on Abraham Lincoln: “Even if it meant being hated by most of the country”

The guest poster today makes his debut on the internet, with last night’s homework assignment.  I think it’s terrific, but I’m a little biased.  As he gets older, I’m sure his thoughts on his hero will be refined, but I hope the central theme of his admiration as expressed in the penultimate sentence doesn’t change.

My Hero: Abraham Lincoln

by Joey Smeltzer

There are a lot of people that I look up to. Most of them are either athletes or politicians. But the person who I look up to the most is Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of United States. I look up to Abraham Lincoln because he was the President during one of the toughest times in American history: The Civil War. His goal was to free the slaves. Because of this, many people hated him. Everybody in the South hated him, and if that wasn’t bad enough, many people of the North hated him because they were upset with the way that he was running the Civil War or were against freeing the slaves. Yet he still managed to get elected President twice. As soon as he was nominated, he started getting death threats from people who were scared he was going to end slavery. When he got into office, the death threats got even worse. Even though people wanted to kill him, he still stood up for what he believed in. On April 14, 1865, he was finally assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. If he did not speak out against slavery, he probably would have never been assassinated. But he still did it because he knew what was right. Abraham Lincoln was my hero because he always did the right thing no matter what – even if it meant being hated by most of the country. I think everybody should try to be like Abraham Lincoln.