From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:
This is Lincoln’s Birthday. He was one of our Presidents. I like him better than Washington, our first one. Washington had false teeth. Some day when I am older, my father is going to take me to Washington, D.C., the capitol city of the U.S., and then I will see Washington’s teeth in a museum. Lincoln didn’t have false teeth and Grandfather said that it was probably because he was killed before his own fell out.
Lincoln was a fine man. He believed that everyone was as good as everyone else and no one had the right to boss anyone else around. In those days people owned slaves. It was a very wicked thing to do. Sometimes husbands and wives were sold to different families and they never saw each other again. The children were sold too. Some families were very kind to their slaves but most of them were mean and some beat them and kept them in chains. So President Lincoln had to have a big war with the people who insisted on having slaves. It really divided up the United States and the half of the United States that didn’t believe in slaves won the war. Now, we are all living happily ever after. Maybe everyone isn’t happy but it is much better; I think.