ABRAHAM LINCOLN

A play by JOHN DRINKWATER

With an introduction by ARNOLD BENNETT

[Illustration: The Riverside Press]


1919



To THE LORD CHARNWOOD

NOTE


In using for purposes of drama a personality of so wide and recent a
fame as that of Abraham Lincoln, I feel that one or two observations
are due to my readers and critics.

First, my purpose is that not of the historian but of the dramatist.
The historical presentation of my hero has been faithfully made in
many volumes; notably, in England, by Lord Charnwood in a monograph
that gives a masterly analysis of Lincoln's career and character and
is, it seems to me, a model of what the historian's work should be. To
this book I am gratefully indebted for the material of my play. But
while I have, I hope, done nothing to traverse history, I have freely
telescoped its events, and imposed invention upon its movement,