Happy 217 to Abraham Lincoln, Disciple of the Declaration

By Ed Epstein

Washington, D.C.

Feb. 12, 2026

Today is the 217th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, who was born into poverty in his parents' log cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky on Feb. 12, 1809. Through his drive and hard work he went much farther in the world than anyone would have thought possible, given where he began.

Some of the birthday wreaths waiting to be laid at the Lincoln Memorial on Feb. 12, 2024.

Lincoln's birthday is commemorated at many places, pretty good for a man who has been dead since 1865. Perhaps the biggest of the birthday events is at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, where a long line of memorial wreaths are laid on his birthday by a range of organizations, including those of descendants of Civil War Union soldiers, Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., places associated with Lincoln like the Hildene Lincoln family home in Manchester, Vermont, the National Park Service, the Lincoln Group and the president of the United States.

The event at the memorial includes music from a military ensemble and a reading of the Gettysburg Address.

In 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it's important on the 16th president's birthday to remember what President-elect Lincoln said in Philadelphia on Feb. 22, 1861, the birthdate of the first president, George Washington. Speaking at Independence Hall, where the Declaration was adopted in July 1776, Lincoln said: "All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments that originated and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence."

And what were those sentiments from the Declaration? "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

It's up to us to live up to those goals laid out in the Declaration that formed the cornerstone of Lincoln's political beliefs.

Happy birthday, Mr. Lincoln

Photo by Ed Epstein, 2024