Robert T. Lincoln Declaration Rock
Stratham, Rockingham County, New Hampshire
Marker Inscription
ROBERT T. LINCOLN / A STUDENT AT PHILLIPS EXETER ACADEMY / SON OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN / READ THE DECLARATION OF / INDEPENDENCE ON THIS ROCK / JULY 4 1860
The Story
In the summer of 1860, seventeen-year-old Robert Todd Lincoln was boarding at Phillips Exeter Academy, cramming to make up for a failed Harvard entrance exam, while his father Abraham Lincoln campaigned for the presidency back in Illinois. During the town's Fourth of July celebration that year, the young man climbed atop this rock in Stratham and read aloud the Declaration of Independence to the gathered crowd. It was an ordinary holiday ritual made quietly extraordinary by who was reading and by the storm gathering over the country — within a year the nation would be at war and his father in the White House.
Why it matters
The rock ties a small New Hampshire town to the Lincoln family on the very eve of the Civil War, capturing a fleeting moment of Fourth-of-July normalcy just before the Union came apart.
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Related people
- · Robert Todd Lincoln
- · Abraham Lincoln
Related events
- · Fourth of July reading of the Declaration of Independence, 1860
Themes & tags
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