My
hometown newspaper publishes once a week and it usually takes another week or
two before I receive it in the mail.
It’s never a problem because my favorite section is not the current
news, but a feature titled: “A Look Back.”
Events that were reported 50 years ago are highlighted and I know I’m
getting old because I recognize most of the names. A recent entry noted how the townspeople
observed the big state holiday on January 19, 1961. What state holiday? Robert E. Lee’s birthday, of course. We are talking Alabama here!
It
was in Dixieland where I was born, way down south one frosty morn where the
“Heart of Dixie” was the logo our license plates and Jefferson Davis pie was the
staple on our dessert plates. We never
sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in church because it was a Yankee song
and we had to gently remind our great-grandparents that “The War of Northern
Aggression” was indeed over and the outcome was not good. Therefore it may surprise you to learn that
one of my heroes as a boy was none other than Abraham Lincoln.
Two
portraits hung over the blackboards in my elementary classrooms, George
Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Mention
the names of U.S. Grant or especially William Tecumseh Sherman and most
southerners would launch into a vitriolic and venomous tirade not fit to print
in anyone’s hometown paper. But mention
Abraham Lincoln and people would pause and speak of his greatness.
My
grandmother took me to Washington, D.C. when I was a boy and I remember the
feeling of awe as I stood before the imposing figure of our greatest president
at the Lincoln Memorial. She guided me
to the wings of the memorial where the eloquent words of the Gettysburg Address
and his second Inaugural Address are inscribed—words that inspired a little boy
then, and continue to move this older man now. . .that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from
the earth. . . With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in.
Lincoln
was not only eloquent, but his practical leadership and natural ability to
bring people of differing persuasions together saved our nation. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin
in her exceptional book, Team of Rivals, describes
how this little known prairie lawyer from Springfield, instead of appointing
his cronies, brought his political rivals together to form his cabinet that
would guide the nation through its darkest hours. Long time adversary William Seward who
started as the front-runner in the 1860 Presidential campaign and initially
used his position on the cabinet to undermine the President, later called
Lincoln’s magnanimity “almost superhuman” and said, “He is the best and wisest man I’ve ever known.”
The
late historian Shelby Foote said that before the Civil War, people would speak
of the United States in the plural. The
United States are . . . But after the war, people said, “The United
States is . . .” Only the man who spoke of malice toward none
and charity for all could create such unity.
How we need such eloquence and statesmanship today!
Have
you noticed that Lincoln’s birthday on February 12 isn’t celebrated like it
used to be? Maybe we need to change
that, to revisit our 16th President, not only to learn from his
genius and marvel at his eloquence, but to follow his example of graciousness,
kindness, fairness, and genuine respect for friend and foe alike. With our country so deeply divided, we need a
Lincoln like leader to bring us together and experience a new birth of freedom,
one nation, under God, because a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Abraham
Lincoln is still my hero.
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