abraham lincoln life
The gulf between then and now
Cleaning out my files, I ran across something I wrote 1998-ish that illustrates the rift between the truly awful candidates for President we have today and those that once were. The chronicle itself doesn't say much philosophically about the man, but simply offers discernment into his character.
It came from a small engage about Abraham Lincoln that I picked up for cheap while traveling through the airport in St. Louis... and I can't find the denounce thing now to be sure the name, but I think it was "Wit and Insight of Abraham Lincoln". (The entire book was really entertaining -- Lincoln was indeed a wit, and uncommonly knowledgeable, too.)
----------- original message from 1998 -----------
I don't fully get the drift the context of the negative quotes I have heard regarding Lincoln [ie, in 1998, estimation that he undermined the Constitution with various war acts], but after reading what paltry I have, I can unequivocally say: He was truly a great man, whatever his flaws. He reminds me of a personage in a Hugo novel [ie, in particular, "Ninety Three" was on my feeling -- because of Lincoln's utter devotion to parsimonious the Union]. I offer you the following extended select which reminded me of a certain scene in Atlas Shrugged. [Ie, the go out when Rearden tries to save the Wet Cherish (the young man sent to regulate Rearden's operations and who then betrayed the sway to try to save Rearden) as he dies of a bullet shawl, while a mob ransacks the plant of Rearden Nerve.]
On a narrow cot, in the military hospital at Conurbation Point, Major Charles H. Houghton was sinking. He had been in command of Fort Haskell, a vital point in the rear of Grant's lines, being directed in an trouble to break the Union lines. Against Grave Houghton, a mere boy of twenty years, were eaten away the science and strategic knowledge of Gen. John B. Gordon, of Georgia.
Helper came at last. The long-haired gray men were beaten back, and Lee's anxious for move was checked. Houghton's leg was amputated and he was infatuated to the hospital at City Point, so that he could die in comparative agreeable, on a clean white cot. But for days he lingered on the borderland of life.
Sometimes in the extended stretches of the night, when life and resistance are at low ebb, it seemed to those who watched that he must be zigzagging back and forth across and across that inexplicable line. Yet always in the morning, when friends inquired for rumour of him, the surgeons could say: "He is alive.
That's all."
At nine o'clock one morning, the door at the end of the avoid was opened and Dr. MacDonald, chief surgeon, called:
"Acclaim! The President of the United States."
There, skin the door, the sunlight streaming into the room over boxy, gaunt shoulders, stood Abraham Lincoln. Into the lodge he stalked, bending his awkward convention ungracefully -- for the doorway was low. At cot after cot he paused to unreservedly some word of cheer, some message of relieve to a wounded soldier.
At Houghton's cot the two men paused. "This is the man," whispered MacDonald.
"So childlike!" questioned the President."This the man that held Fort Haskell?"
MacDonald nodded.
With a goodly, uncouth hand the President motioned for a authority. Silently a nurse placed one at the cot's fever pitch. Houghton did not know; he could not. As though he were afraid it would clatter and pang the sufferer, Lincoln softly placed his stove-tooter hat of exaggerated fashion on the floor. Dust covered his clothes, which were not pressed. As he leaned over the cot a tacky necktie, much awry, dangled close-by Houghton's head. Gently as a woman he took the wasted colorless speedily in his own sinewy one of iron strength. Straight the suspicion of a pressure was there, but Houghton opened his eyes.
A grin which had forgotten suffering answered the giant President's sad smile. In tones easygoing, almost musical it seemed, the President spoke to the boy on the cot, told him how he had heard of his colossal deeds, how he was proud of his fellow
countryman.
A few ineffective words Houghton spoke in response. At the poor, toneless voice the President winced. The doctor had told him that Houghton would die. Then happened a remarkable thing. The President asked to see the wound which was captivating so noble a life.
Surgeons and nurses tried to dissuade him, but Lincoln insisted. The horrors of war were for him to brook as well as others, he told them, and to him the wound was a thing religious.
Bandages long and stained were removed, and the President saw.
Straightening on his feet, he flung his big, lank arms upward. A grumble such as Houghton had not given voice to escaped the lips of the President.
"Oh, this war! This tasteless, awful war!" he sobbed.
Down the deep-lined furrows of the unlovely, kindly face hot tears burned their way. Slowly, tenderly, the President leaned over the pillow. The dust of touring had not been washed from his face. Now the tears, of which he was not humiliated, cut furrows in the grime and stained the pallid sheets on which they fell.
While nurses and surgeons and men watched there in the short hospital, Abraham Lincoln took the pallid fa of Houghton between his hands and kissed it only below the damp, tangled hair.
"My boy," he said, brokenly, swallowing, "you must palpable. You must live!"
The first gleam of real, angry, throbbing life came into the dull eyes. Houghton stiffened with a awake, elastic tension on the cot. With a little wan grin he managed to drag a hand to his forehead. It was the nearest he could present itself to a salute. The awkward form of the President partiality lower and lower to catch the muffled, faint words.
"I intend to, sir," was what Houghton said.
And he did.
The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln
abraham lincoln life: This short is a comical biography about Abraham Lincoln done in a Ken Burns' Style. The two narrators are fighting with each other throughout the faux documentary. Enjoy everyone!
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