One of the biggest New Year’s resolutions made is about starting a diary.  Yes, I admit that I’ve made that resolution as well.  I’ll also admit that it is a difficult one to keep.  It is a really cool thing to do though, because you can keep track of events in your life and read back on them later.  This is what Abraham Lincoln did with the debates against Douglas.  Lincoln kept a scrapbook that he filled with news accounts of the seven debates.  Is that cool or what?  Wow.

To make it even cooler, Lincoln realized that newspapers could lean towards one candidate and not the other.  So he clipped reports about his speeches from newspapers that leaned Republican, while he clipped the Douglas reports from newspapers that leaned towards the Democrat.  He was so concerned with inaccuracies that he even wrote in the margins if he was unsatisfied with the news account.  I guess that’s why they called him “Honest Abe.”

Below is an actual page from the scrapbook.  It reads,
“Fifth joint debate
October 7, 1858, at,
Galesburg, Illinois
Douglas as reported in
The Chicago Times –
Lincoln as reported in
The Press & Tribune.”
Very neat!  Okay, I’m going to go start my diary.  Thanks to the Library of Congress.