The Crimson Light of a Rising Sun

American Minute from William J. Federer

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on," wrote poet Carl Sandburg, who died JULY 22, 1967.

A son of Swedish immigrants who worked on the railroad, Sandburg left school after 8th grade, borrowed his father's railroad pass and traveled as a hobo. He volunteered for military service, was sent to Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, and then attended college on a veteran's bill.

Carl Sandburg wrote children's fairytales, called Rootabaga Stories, and mused of his wanderings in American Songbag.

In 1926, he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The Prairie Years, and in 1939 he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The War Years, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1959, Sandburg was invited to address Congress on Lincoln's birthday.

In his Complete Poems, for which he won a Pulitzer, 1951, Carl Sandburg wrote: "All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel...It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine...I might paraphrase: 'If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.'"

Carl Sandburg wrote: "I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair...I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God."

William J. Federer is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and president of Amerisearch, Inc, which is dedicated to researching our American heritage. The American Minute radio feature looks back at events in American history on the dates they occurred, is broadcast daily across the country and read by thousand on the internet.