First-grader students engaged in a guided historical inquiry about Abraham Lincoln. The teacher carefully intertwined historical content, close reading, critical thinking, and text-based writing during Reading, Writing, and Social Studies classes. Students scrutinized secondary sources, which were largely biographies of Lincoln, to build their historical schemas. The first-graders analyzed primary sources--which were intentionally selected to mitigate historical gaps within secondary sources--in order to establish historical significance and make intertextual connections. Students formulated emerging historical understandings through extemporaneous text-based writing, which were later used to draft, revise, and resubmit expository essays. Students' verbal contributions were far more nuanced than written communications, which their budding fine-motor writing skills limited. Children exhibited critical and historical thinking during whole-class classroom dialogue, small-group discussion, and individual interactions, such as when asked to clarify their writing. Students completed an age-appropriate adaptation of informed action. Teachers and research can gain rich, nuanced understandings from close examinations of students' reading, writing, and thinking.