Presidential historian David Herbert Donald once wrote that every succeeding generation since the Civil War had to "get right with [Abraham Lincoln]." But as historian Richard Norton Smith, the director of the Lincoln library and museum, said, it's more accurate to apply the standard to the 26 men who've followed Lincoln into the White House. Roosevelt's father was close to Lincoln. Young [Theodore Roosevelt] watched Lincoln's funeral procession pass his New York home. On the eve of his 1905 inauguration, Roosevelt received a ring with a lock of Lincoln's hair from Lincoln's former personal secretary. Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern-born president since the Civil War, said his earliest memory was hearing of Lincoln's 1860 election and the prediction of war. During the 1909 centennial celebration of Lincoln's birth, Wilson, then the president of Princeton University, lauded Lincoln. "His character stands colossal there amidst that troubled history of war and disunion," Wilson said. "God send us such men again."
