Remembering Lincoln
David Shribman writes about a commission that you have probably never heard of. The year 2009 will be the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. A commission has been formed to plan a celebration of the man who forever changed this nation.
GETTYSBURG, Pa. — He was a man of faint faith, and yet he is remembered as the greatest believer in American history. He was a man of jokes and gags, and yet he harbored more hurt, more sadness, more loss, than any public man of his time or any other. He was an uncertain man, and yet he is remembered for articulating the great certainties in our national life. He was a humble man, and yet he is acclaimed as the greatest American of all time.
Abraham Lincoln was born 198 years ago, which is about the least remarkable thing you can say about the man with the stainless soul who steeled the Union for its struggle for survival, who thought through the difficulties of emancipation and reconciliation, even if the former made the latter more difficult, and who spoke of bonds of affection, mystic chords of memory and the greater angels of our nature — three of the most evocative phrases in American history, all the more astonishing when you consider that they appeared in one luminous paragraph.
Lincoln was born in Kentucky in 1809, and the pressures of the decimal system and the calendar are conspiring to make the 200th anniversary of his birth, a little more than two years from now, a very big deal. Already Congress, where Lincoln served a single term, has jumped in and created the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. So far the group hasn't come up with much, but it hasn't spent much either, so, in bicentennials as in basketball, no harm, no foul. There will be a commemorative dollar coin, which, if the John F. Kennedy half-dollar and the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins are any indication, will have no more impact on society than the real Lincoln coin, the penny, has on your family's disposable income. There's also going to be an international conference, but then again GATT was an international conference, and for all its worthy achievements do you know a soul who can describe what it is? Thought not.
Which is not to say that there won't be a lot to celebrate in 2009. Lincoln — born poor and rural, fired with idealism, haunted by a sense of justice, blessed with pragmatism, burdened by contradiction, obsessed with mission — is the nation made flesh.
I have long admired Lincoln both for what he was and for what he was not. An imperfect man who still was able to do what nobody thought was possible. A man who spoke and wrote in and admirably succinct and direct way. A man beset by agonies that would have killed lesser men and who was able to retain a sense of humor despite it all.
Shribman believes that the commission will have little real impact, however. The civic structures that used to make such celebrations work are no longer functional. That is a real pity. Instead he suggests encouraging people to read at least one book on the Civil War or on the life of this indispensable man. His very existence forever changed this nation and left an indelible mark on us all. Shribman suggests taking the few minutes to read (or re-read) Lincoln's two inaugural addresses as a very good place to start. He's quite correct. Here is the first address and here is the second. They are astonishing documents that resonate as much today as when they were written.
By Lars Walker, Saturday, 18 November , 2006 @ 11:15 am
I think it’s almost impossible for us today, steeped as we are in revisionist history, to understand what Lincoln meant to Americans–and to freedom-lovers around the world–in the past. The fact, in the 19th Century, when kings and nobility still exercised great power in many places, that in America a boy could be born in a dirt-floored cabin, to people of the lowest class (among the white race) and raise himself through self-education and enterprise to become one of the most powerful men in the world, was a rebuke to the old order and a demonstration of democracy that put Europe to shame.
Lincoln was also able, through the advantage of lacking an Ivy League education, to make himself the best prose stylist of all our presidents.