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Guy C. Fraker

Born: 1938 in St. Joseph, Missouri
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Fraker lives in Bloomington.

Biography: Guy C. Fraker has written extensively and lectures frequently on the Eighth Circuit. He was the consultant on the award-winning PBS documentary, “Lincoln, Prelude to the Presidency,” and co-curated “Prologue to the Presidency: Abraham Lincoln on the Illinois Eighth Judicial Circuit,” a traveling exhibit also on permanent display at the David Davis Mansion, a state historic site in Bloomington. He served as an advisor to the National Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. A retired attorney in Bloomington, Illinois, Fraker is a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Law. He is also a past president of the McLean County Bar Association.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): History; Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Website: http://www.lincolnsladder.com/
Guy C. Fraker on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=guy+c.+fraker


Selected Titles

Lincoln's ladder to the presidency :
ISBN: 9780809332014 OCLC: 818727267

Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale : 2012.

Throughout his twenty-three-year legal career, Abraham Lincoln spent nearly as much time on the road as an attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit as he did in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Yet most historians gloss over the time and instead have Lincoln emerge fully formed as a skillful politician in 1858. In this innovative volume, Guy C. Fraker provides the first-ever study of Lincoln's professional and personal home away from home and demonstrates how the Eighth Judicial Circuit and its people propelled Lincoln to the presidency. Each spring and fall, Lincoln traveled to as many as fourteen county seats in the Eighth Judicial Circuit to appear in consecutive court sessions over a ten- to twelve-week period. Fraker describes the people and counties that Lincoln encountered, discusses key cases Lincoln handled, and introduces the important friends he made, friends who eventually formed the team that executed Lincoln's nomination strategy at the Chicago Republican Convention in 1860 and won him the presidential nomination. As Fraker shows, the Eighth Judicial Circuit provided the perfect setting for the growth and ascension of Lincoln. A complete portrait of the sixteenth president depends on a full understanding of his experience on the circuit, and Lincoln's Ladder to the Presidency provides that understanding as well as a fresh perspective on the much-studied figure, thus deepening our understanding of the roots of his political influence and acumen.

  Looking for Lincoln in Illinois :
ISBN: 9780809336173 OCLC: 965145246

This guidebook allows readers to drive (or just read about) the Eighth Judicial Circuit during Lincoln's era. It contains detailed directions, brief stories about Lincoln locations and events, and a significant collection of photographs, including images of all the court houses in which Lincoln practiced--

 

 

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