Happy Birthday Honest Abe! From Obama to YouTube, complete guide to Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday

February 12, 4:03 PMPop Culture ExaminerDominic Patten

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For a guy born in 1809, Abraham Lincoln is looking pretty good today.   All across the nation, North, South, East and West, and all across the world, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth is proving a cause for celebration. Hell, Mickey Rooney, who is almost old enough to have met Lincoln, is going to recite the Gettysburg Address at Los Angeles' National Cemetery today.

President Barack Obama, who will participate in Lincoln celebrations all day, summed up why Abraham Lincoln's birthday and life is still so important  this morning when he said - 

What Lincoln never forgot, not even in the midst of civil war, was that despite all that divides us -- north and south, black and white -- we were, at heart, one nation and one people, sharing a bond as Americans that could bend but would not break. And so even as we meet here today, in a moment when we are far less divided than in Lincoln's day, but when we are once again debating the critical issues of our time -- and debating them sometimes fiercely -- let us remember that we are doing so as servants of the same flag, as representatives of the same people, and as stakeholders in a common future. That is the most fitting tribute we can pay -- the most lasting monument we can build -- to that most remarkable of men, Abraham Lincoln.

Click here for President Obama's complete speech at the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial celebration

Click here to see why Abraham Lincoln, along with Joss Whedon & Eliza Dushku's Dollhouse & Facebook Unfriending, made our Pop predictions for 2009

Click here for a biography of Abraham Lincoln from the White House website

Coming in the middle of Black History Month and during the opening weeks of the Presidency of Barack Obama, the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birthday gives us all a unique opportunity not just for celebration of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of American Presidents but also a reaffirmation, as the 16th President once said, to "the mystic chords of memory"

Click here for the Library of Congress' official Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial site, which is full interactive media, as well as birthday activities and events all around the country

You think you've seen a Presidential Library - you haven't seen anything until the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. If you can't make it there today, click here for video, audio, documents and photographs on the life and administration of the 16th President. Don't miss the simultaneous reading of the Gettysburg Address

Lincoln lives on YouTube as well. In his time, Honest Abe was a big fan of technology. No doubt he would have enjoyed these 200th birthday greetings and other videos about him. Click here to see President Lincoln's YouTube channel

Barack Obama, who attended the reopening of Ford's Theatre - the Washington DC playhouse where Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865 -  on February 11, has never made a secret of his love of Lincoln. He was even sworn in on the bible that Abraham Lincoln used. The thing is just because he also is a man from Illinois, President Obama is not alone in turning to President Lincoln. All Presidents turn to Lincoln at one point, some hope to emulate the Great Emancipator, others hope to be seen in his glory when they are under attack as he so often was and others still, in their more private moments, perhaps are humbled at the nature of the man as they hold the Executive Office he not only held, but also saved and solidified. Ultimately, all Presidents hope to have the strength that Abraham Lincoln had during the Civil War and to be able to, as the 16th President did during some of America's darkest days, appeal, to "the better angels of our nature."

Born in Kentucky, a slave holding state that stayed in the Union during the Civil War, raised in Indiana and coming of age and prominence in Illinois, Lincoln's life is in many ways the ultimate 19th century American story. He split rails and lived rough as a young man and freed the slave and preserved the Union as an older man. Mythologized beyond compare, and the subject of over 14,000 biographies, the very qualities that reveal Abraham Lincoln to not be a saint but a man are the ones that actually make him all the more astounding. The 16th President's ability to learn, to grow, and his "improvisatory pragmatism," as historian Henry Louis Gates Jr has said, reflects the true greatness of the man we also know as the Great Commoner.

Click here for more on Henry Louis Gates Jr's PBS documentary Looking for Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln didn't singlehandly win the Civil War, nor did he live a life untarnished. But as no man is an island and no man is an angel, what Abraham Lincoln did do was lead. He did so with judgment, with courage, and by example - and that should be the true cause of this yearlong celebration

Looking for Lincoln yourself? Click here to go on an adventure in the land of Lincoln, the great state of Illinois. Walk where Abe walked, sit where Lincoln sat, eat where ... oh you get it, now check it out

Click here for the Illinois Bicentennial Abraham Lincoln Commission, which promises to "remember and discover Lincoln and his times for a new generation." Big words but they deliver

And because that student of history Abraham Lincoln would likely be the first one to remind us - Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin as well. He is also 200 years old today.