The wisdom of Lincoln . . .

I recently finished reading Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" and re-reading all of Lincoln's most important speeches. (See www.Americanrhetoric.com for transcripts).

If there was ever a voice that wisely appeals to our common grounds, who helps us to identify with being AMERICAN despite all of our many disagreements, it was President Lincoln who steadfastly, stubbornly, and successfully refused to let our Union be destroyed.

His first inaugural address in 1861 lays out his logic and reasoning on the matter, and it is wise and relevant in our rhetorical climate today as it was then - and perhaps just as politically unpopular to the same kinds of divisive voices and groups we encounter today.

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."