Lincoln's "Authbiography"

In June of 1860 after he received the Republican nomination for President, Lincoln was asked to prepare a brief sketch of his life that was destined to become a campaign biography. The final version ran to about 3,000 words and he put it together for for a newspaper editor named John Scripps.

When Scripps asked Lincoln for details about his early life in Kentucky, Lincoln said, “Why, Scripps, it is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life. It can be all condensed into a simple sentence, and that sentence you will find in Gray’s Elegy: ‘The short and simple annals of the poor.’ That’s my life, and that’s all you or any one else can make out of it.”