About the Man
The fact is, Abraham Lincoln should still be an inspiration to us all, proof that it matters not what stance you come from, but where your convictions take you.
A wanderer in his youth, jumping from job to job, at the outset Lincoln was just a normal man. But I bet if we were able to ask him on his death bed who he was, he would still describe himself as a common man. The power didn’t change the man, the man changed the power of the presidential office.
Lincoln’s pedigree was no sure sign of greatness, in fact it was quite the opposite. His parents – illiterate, his foundation – the hard Kentucky wilderness, certainly no one could have predicted the impact this one man would have on the United States.
In fact, many felt that by the time Lincoln won the election of 1860 that he would be the last president of the United States. His predecessors were jokes and the task at hand facing Lincoln was immense… the country was about to be split in two. The threat was as imminent as tomorrow is to today.
With all the injustice in the social climate, the venal, near criminal misuse of the higher political powers, and the Civil War that loomed on the horizon like a rising sun, how could one man fix that?
The answer – that one man couldn’t have fixed anything without knowing what he believed to be just. He stood strong to spite those opposed and held on to the hope that right would win out over wrong. The outcome – one nation, with liberty and justice for all.
The quote I used is an excerpt from a letter Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”
