A friend gave me Doris Kearns Goodwin's new biography of Abraham Lincoln for Christmas. I normally don't read 800-page lugs, but "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" is impossible to put down. The historical figures she presents force you to think about our own world. Namely, where we are going to get our Lincolns?

First, the book. The part that struck me was the degree to which the four men who competed for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination had visions for themselves and their country. It wasn't something that came upon Abraham Lincoln, Salmon Chase, William Seward and Edward Bates in a biblical flash. Starting in their childhoods, they studied history, combed newspapers to follow the country's events and dreamed about their place in America.

They also endured the sufferings, deprivations and upheavals of 19th-century America. Personal poverty, loss of family members and the movement west expanded their visions.

As Goodwin describes it, "These four men, and thousands more, were not searching for a mythical pot of gold at the edge of the western rainbow, but for a place where their dreams and efforts would carve them a place in a fast-changing society."

Which brings us to today. Where are the people with a "longing to rise," as Alexis de Tocqueville described the Americans he encountered in the 1800s?

I'm not a pessimist, but this one worries me. Social trends today may inhibit the longing in young Americans.

Start with the computer. For all its wonderful opportunities, like nabbing information in an instant, it can turn us inward. We've got computer games to play, the Web to surf, e-mail to answer.

Combine that with television, and we could gaze into an electronic tube for all of our waking hours, forgetting the world floating around us. And when it does turn us outward, the electronic age can make us feel like very small pieces of a global village.

What a huge irony. A professor friend of mine at Union College, Clifford Brown, noted the other day how Lincoln and his peers had a much narrower horizon in which to make contacts, yet they weren't intimidated. They felt big enough to make a difference.

Here's another troubling trend: the culture of achievement among middle- and upper-middle-class students, many of whom spring from our suburbs. Their high schools produce super-achievers by the bushel. And many of them want to matter in a specific way, as in improving the environment.

But often it seems as though these students filling out Harvard, Princeton and Stanford applications are merely looking for one more achievement to check off their list. A vision for themselves, or their country? I'm not sure.

Enough with those worries, let's turn to the positive. Where should we look for the modern Lincolns, Sewards, Chases and Bateses? After polling friends and colleagues, here are three places to consider:

First, America's immigrant class. While many immigrants are trying to put food on the table, their children could go way beyond them. Like Lincoln and his rivals, they know the value of struggle. Nothing like hardship to forge one's view of the world. It also can kindle Lincoln-like ambition to transcend one's beginnings.

Second, the military. While it can breed yes-men (and -women), it introduces young people to broader cultures than they might find in Des Moines. And struggle? It's harder to imagine a greater chance to experience adversity than in Iraq or Afghanistan. Like the generation that fought World War II, who knows what will come out of the battlefields of the Middle East?

Third, religious communities, particularly the evangelical church. While mega-churches can provide an insular haven for kids, they also provide a moral framework to deal with the world of computer smut, indulgent affluence and the thrusting of adulthood down into our elementary schools. For all its narrowness, the evangelical church — and other houses of faith — may preserve kids' ability to dream and explore their world.

"Longing to rise" may sound like an old-fashioned term, but we have a lot riding on it. There's nothing but the future at stake.