Lincoln's bicentennial

Tomorrow is the bicentennial celebration of the birth of our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln will be remembered for many things. But mostly for being a self-made man somberly walking, drifting toward his destiny. That fate would be saving the Union.

Most memorable for me were his great speeches. He was almost entirely self educated. He’d read Byron, Bunyan, Aesop, and the King James Bible as a young man growing up in Pigeon Creek, Indiana. The rhythms and cadences of those writers inform his prose.

His most famous speech was the Gettysburg Address. “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…,” must be some of the most understated lines in American history, since they’re on literally thousands of coffee mugs, T-shirts and documents all over the nation. In fact, more people know of the speech than of the battle it was written for.

There is also his 1860 Cooper Union speech in New York City: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to that end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” One witness in the crowd said he’d never seen a crowd of people so memorized as that night Lincoln spoke at the Union.

And who could forget his second inaugural address (far more inspiring than the latest), with poetic and inspiring lines like:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

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, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

There are also thousands of letters filled with eloquence and wisdom. I can only recommend you pick up a copy.

So on this bicentennial celebration of his birth my mind is filled with the power of his words. Most great Presidents have been great speakers and, to the degree we can tell, great writers. Let us hope that trend continues. President Obama can be eloquent. He seems to have mastered rhetoric. We will have to wait and see about the wisdom.