“He was a Friend of us Poor Men” Ida M. Tarbell and Abraham Lincoln’s View of Democracy

Abstract

Ida Tarbell (1857–1944), best known for her investigative journalism during the Progressive Era, was also a diligent Lincoln biographer. The author dives into the recently digitized Ida M. Tarbell papers housed at the Allegheny College library to revisit Tarbell’s take on Abraham Lincoln’s years in the Indiana frontier. Tarbell was adamant that Lincoln’s formative years in Spencer County shaped his understanding of what democracy meant to America. She spoke on the subject often and, while not everyone agreed with her interpretation, she acknowledged how her study of Lincoln shaped her own views on democracy in the 1930s.