ABSTRACT
Abraham Lincoln was both a leader and a hero. He led the United States during the Civil War, and in doing so succeeded in both saving the Union and ending American slavery. He is consistently ranked by historians, along with George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt, as one of the greatest of all U.S. Presidents. He was also a hero—to many during his presidency, and to many more after his assassination. Among those who revered Lincoln as a hero while he was alive was an African-American woman Lincoln encountered when he toured Richmond, Virginia two days after the Confederate government abandoned its capital. She touched the President’s arm as he walked the city’s streets and shouted, “I know that I am free, for I have seen Father Abraham and felt him.” The moment Lincoln died his near apotheosis and transformation into a more widely recognized hero began almost instantaneously. Standing at the bedside of the slain President, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton proclaimed, “Now he belongs to the ages.” Millions of people soon saw Lincoln as a martyr (Harris, 2004, p. 205).
