A Birthday Tribute To Abraham Lincoln  Correction Feb. 9, 2009
We incorrectly said that the Emancipation Proclamation was
signed in 1864. It was actually signed on Jan. 1, 1863.  As the
200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth nears, Scott Simon
has a tribute for the Great Emancipator.   SCOTT SIMON, host:
This week in 1809, the man considered the greatest American who
ever lived was born.  (Soundbite of song "Way Down Upon the
Wabash")  Mr. PETE SEEGER: (Singing) Way upon the Wabash Such
land was never known If Adam had passed over it, This soil he'd
surely own...  SIMON: Two hundred years later, Abe Lincoln of
Illinois still seems to embody America in its contradictions - a
self-educated sodbuster and rail-splitter who became renowned
for silken rhetoric; the leader of a nation that was at once a
beacon of liberty and a bastion for slavery; a man who said he
hated war, then drove his country through the bloodiest war.
Lincoln's face has come to be seen as the very portrait of
America: rough, noble, sa