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Raymond J. de Souza: Oration's depressing slide from Lincoln to Trump

And remembering one of Canada's greatest orators, the late Stephen Lewis

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LINCOLN CITY, INDIANA — How should presidents speak in times of war?

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Circumstances happily brought me to the undulating hills of remote southwestern Indiana, to the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial.

Raymond J. de Souza: Oration's depressing slide from Lincoln to Trump Back to video

While born in Kentucky and spending his adult life in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln lived on a farm here from age seven to 21. He came to Indiana as a boy and left as a man.

Thomas Lincoln moved his family here in 1816, and his wife, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died in 1818, when their son Abraham was only nine years old. Thomas would remarry, and the young Lincoln would grow up with his stepmother and her children, along with his own siblings, working hard on the farm. The precocious boy would school himself, reading whatever he could get his hands on, as he would later teach himself the law.

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