In 1837, 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln met a 23-year-old shopkeeper named Joshua Speed in Springfield, Illinois. The two became ...

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

PETERSBURG, Ill. (AP) — Before his famous debates, before the Civil War rent the nation, before he helped end slavery and before his tragic assassination, Abraham Lincoln had New Salem.

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) ...