TIL: the education of Abraham Lincoln

[timelets]

“When asked, years later, to specify his education, Lincoln wrote a single word: “defective.” *

...he perfected performance: no one used humor more readily, more aptly, or with less recycling. His anecdotes, often scatological, flowed as easily as the paper the shaky banks of his day issued as currency, but the stories never lacked point or purpose: it was said of Lincoln that he could “make a cat laugh.”

John Lewis Gaddis. “On Grand Strategy.”

* in contrast with Johan Quincey Adams, who had amazing education, knew Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, German, Dutch, etc., but turned out to be a lousy president. Nevertheless, Adams in his later career as a US Representative from MA and a lawyer was key to advancing the abolishing of slavery in the US.