New Salem, a tiny central Illinois village where Lincoln spent half-a-dozen years in the 1830s, has fallen into disrepair.

part of the reconstructed village of New Salem where Abraham Lincoln lived from 1831 to 1837, March 10, 2025, in Petersburg, Ill. (AP Photo/John O'Connor) ...

Lincoln had struggled to heal the wounds of war, yet he became one of its last victims, and the war left the country no less divided. Abraham Lincoln grew up on the American frontier. Born in a ...