By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com

Visitors to the Crawford County Fairground Thursday may have seen a time traveler in their midst as 16th President Abraham Lincoln walked the grounds greeting people.

Lincoln, who was portrayed by John Cooper, greeted fairgoers from 2 to 8 p.m. giving listeners a glimpse into the life and times of Honest Abe.

Staying in the Abraham Lincoln character Cooper explained why he was visiting the Crawford County Fair in the year 2014.

“I am here predominantly to celebrate with our veterans who are going to be here a little bit later today.” Lincoln said. “I also came to visit with the senior, or should I say seasoned citizens that were here earlier in the day. I had the opportunity to speak to them and tell them a few stories from my lifetime.”

Describing the difficulties of the Civil War, the Lincoln doppelganger said that acting as commander-in-chief was one of the most difficult duties he faced during the Civil War.

“The war itself was the hardest thing, but one of the more difficult things in operating a war of any kind is the function of Commander in Chief where the president basically has to control the generals, and I was ill-suited for that when I became president,” Cooper, as Lincoln, said. “I had a brief five-month stint in the militia in 1832 in the Black Hawk Indian War, but beyond that I had no knowledge how to run an army, and I had to rely on advisors for the first couple of years. Which is why I believe our armies struggled badly until I gained more knowledge and started putting the right generals in place.

“And of course when I finally brought General Grant from the west in 1864 to be Commanding General of the Army and he left a very competent General Sherman in charge in the west, that is when things started to percolate for the Union Army and we began to strangle the southern armies with the Anaconda Plan.”

Continuing in Lincoln character, Cooper debunked the myth that the Gettysburg Address was wrote on a train on the trip to Gettysburg.

“I was invited three weeks prior to the ceremony so it wasn’t until the first of November that I was invited to go up on Nov. 19. I had no idea I would be included in the ceremony.” Lincoln said. “I labored over the speech for two weeks, and one of the biggest things I did I brought a man named William Saunders to visit me in my office 10 days before I went. He worked for our Department of Agriculture’s landscape architect and he’s the man who designed the cemetery. And he brought with him the design of the cemetery and sketches he had made of the battlefield, and he described what I would see when I would get there. And that helped me to choose some of my words and phrasing for that speech.”

Cooper will next visit the Ohio State Fair as Lincoln from July 23 through August 3.

More information on Cooper’s Lincoln can be found online at http://www.fourscore7yearsago.com/.