Abraham Lincoln, both in his time and in ours, has always stood much taller than life. Well over a century after his assassination, Americans remain fascinated with the Civil War: what were the real issues over which it was fought, who were the actual people involved, and what the everyday life of those people was like. Lincoln, as the epitome of both the good and the bad of that war, continues to loom as the most important single object of our interest.     The people's lore about Lincoln has through the years continued to grow and to assume ever greater importance both for what it tells about the man and the age in which he lived and for its amusement value.