Abraham Lincoln, The Hoosier Youth is a heroic bronze sculpture by American artist Paul Manship and was commissioned in 1928 by the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company for its headquarters in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The statue is tall and sits atop a pedestal designed by architect Benjamin Wistar Morris and a granite base. The sculpture depicts a youthful Abraham Lincoln during the time he lived in Indiana. The Lincoln figure wears a handmade shirt, buckskin trousers, and boots. He is seated on a tree stump and holds a book. An ax leans against his leg and a dog is seated beside him. Manship also sculpted four bronze allegorical bas reliefs, one for each side of the pedestal, to represent traits associated with Lincoln: Charity, Fortitude, Justice and Patriotism. The statue was dedicated on 16 September 1932. Description The Lincoln sculpture is installed between two wings in the forecourt of the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company's former headquarters building in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The heroic bronze statue stands approximately tall and depicts Lincoln as a youthful frontiersman with a serious, reflective, and slightly melancholy expression—characteristics used to describe Lincoln's demeanor throughout his life. Lincoln is seated on a tree stump and holds a partially closed book in his proper right hand. An ax leans against his proper right leg. His proper left hand rests on the head of a dog seated beside him. Lincoln wears a homemade linsey-woolsey shirt, buckskin trousers, and boots to emphasize his frontier background. The ax represents Lincoln's youth in Indiana's backwoods, the book symbolizes his intellect, and the dog is a symbol of his love of animals, human empathy, and protectiveness. Although it is not known if Lincoln had a dog in his youth, Lincoln biographer William Herndon relates a story of Lincoln's refusal to leave a dog behind when the family moved west to Illinois in 1830. According to Herndon, after a stranded dog traveling with the wagon party refused to cross an icy stream, the twenty-one-year-old Lincoln removed his shoes and socks, waded across the chilly water to retrieve the dog, and carried it back in his arms to rejoin the group. Manship's bronze statue rests on a pedestal designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, the architect for the Lincoln National building who was also a sculptor. The pedestal is graced with four allegorical reliefs by Manship, one on each side of the pedestal, portraying