The first time the journalist Noah Brooks saw Abraham Lincoln, in 1856, he was underwhelmed. The former one-term congressman had come to address a Republican club in Dixon, Ill., where Brooks worked and lived. As Brooks later recalled: “Almost everyone was disappointed at the personal appearance of Lincoln.” Brooks described him as “sallow in complexion . . . with long arms hanging awkwardly . . . his small head covered with short dark hair brushed carelessly back.” It all changed when Lincoln spoke: “There was an irresistible force of logic, a clinching power of argument, and a manly disregard of everything like sophistry.
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