The low clown out of the prairies, the ape-buffoon,
The small-town lawyer, the crude small-time politician,
State-character but comparative failure at forty
In spite of ambition enough for twenty Caesars,
Honesty rare as a man without self-pity,
Kindness as large and plain as a prairie wind,
And a self-confidence like an iron-bar:
This Lincoln, President now by the grace of luck,
Disunion, politics, Douglas and a few speeches
Which make the monumental booming of Webster
Sound empty as the belly of a burst drum.
Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown’s Body
Something for the weekend. Lincoln and Liberty Too, the most stirring campaign song in American history, sung by Bobby Horton who has waged a one man crusade to bring Civil War music to modern audiences. Mr. Lincoln’s birthday is on Monday which this year coincides with the state holiday in Illinois. I always close down the law mines on that day. Lincoln used to say that Henry Clay was his ideal of a statesman and for me Abraham Lincoln has always filled that role. Presidents come and Presidents go, but Washington and Lincoln remain, the fixed stars of the better angels of our natures.
“Presidents come and Presidents go, but Washington and Lincoln remain, the fixed stars of the better angels of our natures.”
Reagan too, Reagan too!
One thing that we moderns tend to forget is that figures like Washington and Lincoln were actually very controversial and “divisive” in their own time. Well, maybe not Washington but Lincoln certainly was. This passage from the American Winston Churchill’s novel “The Crisis” — written in 1901, when the Civil War was still within living memory and people who knew Lincoln personally were still alive — sums it up pretty well:
“Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. And the moan of the storm gathering in the South grew suddenly loud and louder….it might well seem strange –yea, and intolerable –to many that this comedian of the country store, this crude lawyer and politician, should inherit the seat dignified by Washington and the Adamses.”
Even Washington had his critics during the Revolution Elaine, as typified by the Conway Cabal. Success does have a way of silencing critics.
Not from the Civil War era, but from the 1940’s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr1dZlqGorc
Abe LIncoln Had Just One Country, One Banner To Wave
Thanks Anzlyne! I had never heard that song before.