Dozens of recordings have presented the stirring songs and sentimental ballads of the Civil War era. Several of these discs have even touted themselves as Abraham Lincoln's favorite music, often with little evidence to support the claims. At this--the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth--we wanted to try something different. We wanted to present music that was specifically written for or about our nation's sixteenth president or that had a well-documented connection with him. This CD is the result. As you will hear, this is music for piano and voice. The piano never dominated America's musical scene as it did the mid-nineteeth century. Thousands of the instruments were being built every year. At the same time, improvements in printing made it possible to publish sheet music at affordable prices, and railroads and canals helped merchants distribute both sheet music and instruments. An entire generation of amateur pianists was born, and families began singing in parlors across the country. We learned most of these songs from original sheet music, now at the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana at the Library of Congress. The idea for the cover artwork came from a remark by Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, who noted that Lincoln used to store papers in his stovepipe hat--"an extraordinary receptacle," as Herndon put it, that functioned as Lincoln's "desk and memorandum book." We hope that you will enjoy listening to this CD as much as we enjoyed making it. --Anne Enslow. For classroom use a teacher's guide can be found at our Web site. Search "Enslow music."