There have been many presidents in American history, but only two were so admirable and vital that their birthdays became holidays. One of those is Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, whose birthday anniversary is today.
Lincoln himself once said, “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” In his case, his tree towers up to the heavens, second only to Washington’s, and his shadow stretches to our own day. To the slaves he freed and the military men he led to victory, he really seemed a Heaven-sent messenger, because for all his flaws and mistakes, he was willing to sacrifice everything for justice, even his life.
Indeed, Lincoln’s assassination by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, who decided to murder the president after hearing him express support for black civil rights, was one of the greatest tragedies in our history. Racist Democrat Andrew Johnson took over in Republican Lincoln’s stead, making a catastrophe out of Reconstruction and retarding civil rights. As General and later President U.S. Grant said of Lincoln, he was the “greatest I have ever known and the day of his death the darkest of my life.”
One of the greatest scenes in the 1939 Oscar-winning film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is when the youthful, idealistic, newly-appointed Senator Smith (Jimmy Stewart) arrives in Washington, D.C., and rushes out for some sightseeing. After excitedly touring the main monuments of the city, including the Capitol, Smith reaches the highlight and culmination of his impromptu tour: the Lincoln Memorial. Starry-eyed and awed, he stands before the massive statue of Lincoln, and then he hears a little boy reading out the Gettysburg Address from the wall, with a little help from his grandpa.
Or, perhaps, take a true story instead of a fictional one to illustrate Lincoln’s greatness. In April 1865, Lincoln came to visit the captured Confederate capital of Richmond, Va. Many white residents of the city hated him, but nevertheless, he had an extremely enthusiastic welcoming committee composed of some locals: slaves to whom Lincoln had brought for the first time in their lives the hope of freedom. When Lincoln stepped on shore, a dozen black laborers dropped their tools. “Bless the Lord, here is the great messiah!” cried one elderly man, falling to his knees in front of Lincoln.
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But Lincoln was a true American. “Don’t kneel to me,” he said earnestly. “That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.” So the president and his son moved through the streets of Richmond, patrolled by black troops and followed by newly freed slaves, who shouted, “Bless the Lord, Father Abraham’s Come!” Lincoln later turned to address his admirers: “You are free — free as air… Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years.”
Yes, it was a sin, one of the darkest in America’s history. Lincoln didn’t always understand how evil slavery was, but he learned — unlike the Democrats/Confederates who became increasingly defensive of slavery as the war went on. Whenever you read a Democrat/Confederate critique of Lincoln, whenever you read a Richmond politician’s or Fredericksburg lady’s mourning about “losing our freedom” to Union troops, remember that their slaves wept with joy when Abraham Lincoln arrived, because for the first time in their lives, they were free — free as air, and their birthright of liberty had been given them.
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