LincolnFreak: Merry Christmas from the Lincoln White House, even if it is 140 years too late

Now scrolling: 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.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Merry Christmas from the Lincoln White House, even if it is 140 years too late

This portrait is actually Lincoln's last reception at the White House and has nothing to do with Christmas. But isn't it festive looking? I like it a lot.

It's never too late to celebrate Christmas with Abraham Lincoln. He lives in our hearts forever, like the baby born in the manger on this day. May the joy and peace of the season be yours throughout the year.

And if you're looking for a terrific Lincoln place to visit, try the Logan County Courthouse. It was placed on the National Register December 24, 1985, and here is a great website about it.

Logan County Courthouse

1 comment:

librarian666 said...: Last night, I stayed up until 2AM watching the Hitler channel: I saw the show on the Lincoln assassination, followed by the Kennedy killing and thought of you! Happy Xmas.

I wonder what was in the missing pages of Booth's diary. I bet it was something like "That bastard Stanton hung me out to dry!" ;)

Was it predestined that Lincoln should go to the theatre even though he somehow knew it was a bad idea, or was it his free will that over-rode the spiritual warnings that he had?

Why would someone with so much to lose, like Booth, do something so crazy? Was he an egomaniac? A nutjob? Did he have some sort of unmentioned guarantee from the government that gave him confidence to act in such a way? Or was he a spurned lover? How could he so greatly misjudge what the public reaction would be to the assassination? Did Lincoln overstep the boundaries of the Constitution?

With 20/20 hindsight, the slavery thing looks so obviously wrong to us, but at the time, abolition must have appeared to Southerners as a form of economic warfare because businesses were entrenched in the econonic model of slavery and there were no reasonable alternatives offered to slaveholders to transition from a slave worker model to a free worker model. There also was rampant social rejection of African Americans as citizens both in the North and South. As freemen, they would have no social place and Booth perhaps saw the hugely negative social and economic repercussions of Abolition for the South.

Just some random thoughts for you, my dear.

J; December 24, 2007 at 11:42 AM