In the essay, "Bob Sherwood in Illinois" John Mason Brown describes Abraham Lincoln as Sherwood's "hero," which was the reason for the creation of the play.

Why Abe Lincoln? Had Sherwood been a small man, he said he might, instead, have written a play about Napoleon. But Lincoln was a tall man outside and a giant within, and Sherwood a taller man who was growing inside year by year. This inner growth readied him for Abe this plus the fact that, with the challenges to freedom multiplying throughout the world, Lincoln moved into the present with a new timeliness as "a man of peace who had had to face the issue of appeasement or war."

We say much about ourselves in our choice of heroes. They are the mirrors not only of what we would like to be but a reflection in part of what we are...