Mathew Brady portrait of Abraham Lincoln taken Feb. 27, 1860.

When two centuries have passed since the birth of a historical figure, he usually has receded into the mists of time. To most of us, he has become unknowable beyond the facts and bromides we are taught as schoolchildren.

Not so with Abraham Lincoln, born on this day in 1809. Lincoln remains within reach.

My father would have turned 82 this year. When I was a boy, he would tell me about a Memorial Day parade he witnessed as a youngster in his native Cincinnati. From the street curb, he could see a few Civil War veterans on hand, riding in the back of an open automobile.

I have wondered since then about the old veterans my dad saw that day. Could one of them, as a young soldier, 70-odd years before, have been reviewed by President Lincoln? Could the sight of that soldier, somehow, in some small way, have touched the president, as it touched my father and, in the telling, me?

As a young lawyer, I argued an appeal before Illinois’ Fifth District Appellate Court in Mount Vernon. The court sits in a majestic old courthouse where Abraham Lincoln, too, had appeared. Mr. Lincoln did not plead any famous cases at Mount Vernon. Neither had I.

We were there for the same reasons. To make a living for our families. To do a good job for our clients. But to stand where Lincoln stood, and aspire to practice law as he did, was enough.

From time to time, I idle on eBay — to feed my imagination and waste a small portion of our family savings. My favorite acquisition is a sturdy copy of the Feb. 27, 1860 edition of the New York Tribune.

A small public announcement appears on page 1: “The Hon. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois will speak at the Cooper Institute.”

Mr. Lincoln stepped into Matthew Brady’s photography studio that day, to sit for the portrait that introduced him to the nation. That evening, in a building still standing, he delivered what came to be known as his Cooper Union speech, which, more than any other utterance, historians argue, may have won him the presidency.

It does not burn with the same fire as some of his other speeches. Instead, it is a lengthy and logical defense of the federal government’s right to control slavery. But it ends with a hint of the passion to come:

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

To read about Lincoln is to understand the joy he experienced as a father, how he delighted in the company of his children — and to glimpse the unimaginable sorrow he felt when he lost two of his four sons in his lifetime — Eddie at age 3 and Willie at age 11.

To read what Mr. Lincoln wrote is to realize the deep faith he had in his countrymen — and how, to the end, he believed they could be reached by poetry and reason and moved to do what is right, even in the darkest times.

When Mr. Lincoln died, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton is reputed to have said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

That could be. We can say with certainty that he still belongs to us.

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Notice of Abraham Lincoln's inpending speech at the Cooper Institute, as it appeared in the New York Tribune