I was fortunate to see a sneak preview of the movie Lincoln a few weeks ago, and it is fabulous. Daniel Day-Lewis will be nominated if not win an Oscar for this performance, it is that good.
I was struck by several things when I saw this movie. 1. The language used back in the day was really quite beautiful. I wish we spoke more eloquently in today's day and age. But we really do seem to be doomed to become idiots of the age of technology, as has been reported in the news lately. 2. Party politics was just as rife with conflict then as it is now. Except back then the Republicans were actually much more socially conscious of their duties towards "the least among us" than they seem to be now. 3. And Abraham Lincoln was a man of great principle. It is said that towards the end of his presidency that he became so stooped over from the weight of the mantle of the office that he could barely stand upright.
He wasn't perfect by any means. He was sometimes cold to his wife. Loving to his youngest son, but at the expense of his older son. Willing to make back yard deals with politicians in order to move forward on his agenda. Conflicted enough to possibly delay the end of a war that had killed hundreds of thousands by a few days so that he could try to pass an amendment.
But he was also a man of great warmth and humor. Quick witted. A great story teller. And a man with a passionate belief in the equality of man.
You see Lincoln knew that he had to do something about the issue of the slaves. He knew that as a war powers act the Emancipation Proclamation would not hold up once the war was over. But with every fiber of his being, he knew that the enslavement of man was wrong. He worked tirelessly in the last months of his life to ensure that the freedom of all men would be constitutionally mandated. And thus the 13th Amendment was passed in Congress in January of 1865 and ratified by the States in December of that same year. Lincoln was of course assassinated in April of 1865, so it is a tragedy he didn't get to live very long to see the fruits of his labor.
Doris Kearns Goodwin called Lincoln 'sexy' on the Colbert Report last week. I have to admit I can see where she is coming from. Freedom definitely is sexy. ;)
Side Note: All of this inane talk of seceding from the union since the last election has really gotten me riled up.
I leave you with the language of this beautiful piece of American history. Read it aloud if you can, savor each word. Pure poetry I tell you.
The Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
