>>> andie nachgeborenen
Why surprised? We're not an especially literate people, I mean, people don't read much of anything. The Bible itself is hard going and hard to figure out, lots of it is boring -- my very literate son, who, however, is certainly not nearly as bookish as I was at his age, probably a good thing -- gave up on the Good Book in disgust at its sheer tedium when he started with Genesis. I think he may have got through part of Exodus. ^^^^^ CB: I think for most people their knowledge of what's in the Bible comes from having sections of it read to them during religious services. ^^^^^
Moreover, the Bible is a sort of random selection of myth, quasi-historical
narratives, genealogies, law, poetry (yeek!), assorted sayings, instructions to various small religious communities.
^^^ CB: You mean no words of God in it. What a let down. ^^^^
Lincoln, whose writing is a high point of American literature, is
said to have read mainly Shakespeare, the Bible,
and the Illinois statutes and case law -- given that then and now that Illinois legal writing is no model, and given the, well, Biblical cadences of his writing, it's reasonable to assume that he got a
lot out of reading the Good Book. (He also read Coke on Littleton -- a great common law treatise on the land law
but also no literary exemplar.)
^^^^ CB: I believe that Lincoln was the publisher of a German language newspaper, probably
to get support from German immigrants. There were a lot of German expats in Illinois at
the time. Many were probably radicals, as they were refugees from the German rev of 1848 , i.e. 48ers.
I was speculating that therefore , he may have at least read _The Manifesto_ et al. The 48ers were a significant community
supporting Lincoln for President. The Marxists ,
including Joseph Wedeymeyer worked hard for Lincoln, and pushed the Republicans for abolition, as well as serving as fighters in the Civil War. They were important in Lincoln's re-election campaign
Recall that the famous quote of Lincoln regarding
labor as the source of value or some such. He may have gotten the idea from these contacts.
http://www.germany.info/relaunch/info/missions/consulates/chicago/history.html
"A failed German democratic revolution
in 1848 forced many well-educated, politically-active Germans to flee to the United States. This group became very involved in the American antislavery movement. It is said that German Americans were instrumental in the election of Abraham Lincoln (who owned and operated a German-language newspaper). Carl Schurz, a leading forty-eighter, was Lincoln's first ambassador to Spain, a brigadier general during the civil war, a senator and finally, the secretary of the interior under President Rutherford B. Hayes "