Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1907-01-17
A Farm Worth Saving.

citation has not yet secured all the
funds it wants and sends out another
appeal to the American people for
small contributions to aid it in realiz-
ing its praiseworthy purpose of making
national park out of the farm in
Larue county, Kentucky, upon which
Abraham Lincoln was born in 1909. The
farm itself which comprises 10 acres
Of the famous bluegrass region, is the
ditional funds are needed to make a
great public park of it, erect a historic
building and properly care for the
property during the years to come. The
plan has not been to make the park the
result of the contributions of wealthy
few, but to give all the people of the
country a chance to contribute small
sum as they did to the great tomb and
monument of William Mckinley which
is now being erected in Canton, Ohio.
The response has been most general
and generous, the subscriptions rang
ing from 25 cents to s25, and being re-
ceived from every state in the union.
Gov. Folk of Missouri is president of
the association, and among the trus-
tees are men like Joseph H. Choate of
New York, Henry Waterson of Ken
IT, 81
Porter, ex-Secretary Gage, and others
Of equal prominence. The offices of the
Broadway, New York City, and there
all contributions should be sent. Just
as the nation sacredly preserves Mt.
Vernon, the Washington monument,
the tomb of Grant, Bunker Hill, the
battlefield of Gettysburg, and a score
of other memorials to the great events
and great heroes of our national life,
so should the birthplace of the mar
tyred Lincoln be preserved. and its To-
cation makes it especially available for
national park purposes, perpetual
shrine Of patriotism and peace. AS the
preface of a little circular recently
sent out by the Lincoln Farm associa-
ton appealing for funds, the great
American author and humorist, Mark
Twain, has this to say:
"There is a natural human instinct
that is gratified by the sight of any
thing hallowed by association with a
great man or with great deeds. So
people make piigrimageS to the town
whose streets were once trodden by
Shakespeare, and Hartford guarded
her Charter Oak for centuries because
it had once had hole in it that helped
to save the liberties Of a colony. But
In most cases the connection between
the great man or the great event and
the relic we revere is accidental.
Shakespeare might have lived in any
other town as well as in Stratford, and
Connecticut'S charter might have been
hidden in Il Woodchuck hole as we'll as
in the Charter Oak. But it was no ac-
cidcnt that planted Lincoln on a Ken
lucky farm, halfway between the
Lakes and the Gulf. The association
there had substance in it. Lincoln be-
longod just where he was put. If the
Union was to be saved, ii had to be Il
man Of such an origin that should save
il. No wintry New England Brahmin
could have done it, or any torrid cot
ton-nlantcr, regarding the distant Yam
kee rs d species of obnoxious foreigner.
It needed a man Of the Border, where
civil war meant the grapple Of brother
with brother and diSunion raw and
CARING wound. 1t needed one VINO
knew slavery not from books only, but
as a living thing. knew the good that
WAS mixed with it's evil and knew the
evil not merely as it affected the ne
grocs, but in it's hardly less baleful in
fuence. upon the poor whites. 1t need
ed one who knew how human all the
parties to the quarrel were, how much
alike they were at bottom, who saw
them all reflected in himself, and felt
their dissensions like the tearing apart
of his own soul When the war came
Georgia sent an army in gray and
Massachusetts an army in blue, but
Kentucky raised armies for both sides.
And this man. sprung from Southern
poor whites, born on a Kentucky farm
and transplanted to an Illinois village
this man in whose heart knowledge and
charity had left no room for malice
was marked by. Providence as the one
to "bind up the nations wounds. his
birthplace is worth saving.