The Courier-Journal's Bob Hill "calls out" Kentucky on Abraham Lincoln. I say: Good for him!

Read the "calling out".

Here are excerpts:

Somewhere in Kentucky's mad bicentennial birthday rush toward further deification of Abraham Lincoln, it must be said his native state gave him just 0.9 percent of the vote in the pivotal 1860 presidential election that saved our nation and changed the world — as in 1,364 votes in a total of 146,216 cast.

You can — and should — look it up.

Lincoln was our greatest president. Yet the great fuss in celebration of his 200th birthday seems too much an exercise in public relations, bragging rights and tourist promotion — without enough honest history.

Three states now rightly claim Lincoln: Kentucky, where he lived his first seven years; Indiana, where he grew up, taught himself to read and write, and lived until he was 21; and Illinois, where he became a lawyer, got into politics — and returned in a flag-draped coffin as a martyred president.

Kentucky, of course, remained personally important to Lincoln — his wife, Mary Todd, was from here; John Todd Stuart, a Centre College graduate, got him started in law in Illinois; Louisville's Speed family welcomed him as a guest.

But that didn't mean Kentuckians ever wanted him to be president.

Let's begin this way-too-brief history in 1860 with Lincoln being chosen as the compromise Republican candidate for president. The party was only 6 years old, and formed in opposition to the immense political power of slave owners in the South.

Lincoln was then considered a "moderate" on slavery, and being from the "west" — Illinois — he appealed to that constituency. His first vice president — and you could win a bar bet on this one with 90 percent of our current populace — was Sen. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine.

Hamlin was chosen to balance the ticket. He didn't want the job, didn't even know he was a vice presidential candidate until some friends burst into a hotel card game to tell him he'd been selected. He was ignored by Lincoln in his first term, and dumped for the hopeless Andrew Johnson in his second.

Lincoln did not campaign prior to the 1860 election. His opponents in a nation horribly divided over slavery, state's rights and economic issues were John Bell, the Constitutional Union party pick from Tennessee; Stephen A. Douglas, the "Northern Democratic" pick from Illinois; and John C. Breckinridge, the "Southern Democratic" choice from Kentucky.

The Democrats were so divided — some things never change — they eventually required three conventions at two locations, one north and one south, to pick Douglas and Breckinridge.

Breckinridge, another Centre College graduate, would go on to become a Confederate general of Kentucky's famous "Orphan Brigade" of southern supporters, and U.S. vice president from 1856 to 1860.

So Kentucky could claim two of the four horses in the 1860 presidential race. The voter turnout nationwide was 81.2 percent. In Kentucky, Bell, a prosperous slave owner who was opposed to southern secession, got 66,058 votes. Breckinridge got 54,143 votes. Douglas received 26,651. Lincoln crept home with 1,364.

Lincoln carried both Indiana and Illinois in 1860, but received only 39.8 percent of the total national vote. It did give him 180 electoral votes — with 152 required to win.

In the 1864 election, Lincoln ran against Gen. George McClellan, whom he'd once appointed head of the Union Army. Lincoln, joining with the "War Democrats" in a "National Union Party," lost only three states — New Jersey, Delaware and, yes, Kentucky, where at least he received 30 percent of the vote.

The nation got his second inaugural address — with malice toward none and charity for all.