Carl Sandburg was born to Swedish-American parents on January 6, 1878, in Galesburg, Illinois, a prairie town that attracted large numbers of immigrants because of job opportunities at the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroad shops. His father worked in the railroad yards and never earned more than nine dollars a week, barely enough to feed, house, and clothe a young family and certainly not enough to send the children to high school. At the age of thirteen, Carl left school and began a succession of odd jobs. When he was nineteen, he left Galesburg in a boxcar, working his way to Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado. Shortly after his return to Illinois in 1898, he enlisted in the state militia and fought in Cuba and Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. He sent long letters about his experiences in Latin America to the Galesburg Evening Mail. ...