PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Not surprisingly, Americans usually list Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents. With the recent 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, an article in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Surprising Global Reach of Lincoln,” brings to light the importance of our 16th president internationally.

In 1863, Giuseppe Garibaldi, the father of Italian reunification, praised Lincoln calling him “the teacher of liberty to our fathers,” and Willy Brandt, the mayor of divided Berlin in 1950 quoted Lincoln’s well-known phrase, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Pairing Lincoln with Sun Yat-Sen, the Taiwan government in 1959 issued a stamp of the two standing shoulder-to-shoulder and the Gettysburg address has been translated in comic-strip form in Vietnamese.

Check the Internet for many upcoming celebrations while we await the opening soon of a new Civil War Museum at the 1st Bank of the United States on south 3rd Street in Philadelphia.

Reported By Dr. Marciene Mattleman, KYW Newsradio