Our Sixteenth President

Event #1
FYS
Schade Lecture

Lectures have never been my cup of tea. I really have to be interested in order to pay attention to a lecture. I picked a lecture that I thought would be the most interesting to me so that I can write this. Abraham Lincoln has always been one of my favorite presidents, I do not know why; maybe it is because I liked top hats when I was little. There are not too many presidents in which I know what number president they were, but almost everyone knows he is our sixteenth president.
The name of the lecture was “Abraham Lincoln and the permanent Campaign,” by Richard Norton Smith. I felt that this lecture was more a life story about Abraham Lincoln and I liked it, even though there may have been a few times I was not paying attention. Abraham Lincoln was a great man and many people liked him, but some people will tell you that he was not all that smart. Smith says how he was a man that learned a lot from his mistakes and was still building up to his presidency. This tells me that Lincoln may not have been ready to be president and if that was the case than he could possibly survived a lot longer. Even though Lincoln did not serve as president for very long he still had a great impact on everyone. This could just be me, but Lincoln seems to be one of the most popular presidents and if you were to ask someone to name some presidents Abraham Lincoln would be one of the first ones. I think that Richard Smith was a very good talker and he really seemed to have everyone eager to hear more about the great Abraham Lincoln. He would keep the audience listening, especially with jokes. When people just stand there and talk, I can not focus, but I listen to almost everything Smith had to say. Smith seemed like an extremely intelligent person with a lot of knowledge that I do not know. I liked this talk about