Abraham Lincoln...

"Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other." William Tecumseh Sherman speaking about Abraham Lincoln in his Memoirs of William T. Sherman

There is no American who is more beloved than Abraham Lincoln. A remarkable fact considering that he made war on half of this country and where many still despise the him.

Some modern day scholars have tried to play the role of iconoclast and tear down the hallowed image we have of the benevolent, but resolute President who lead us through out nation's darkest hour.

They accuse President Lincoln of being a racist because he believed that the black man was intellectually inferior to the white man. Of course the fact that this was the prevailing belief amongst whites in mid-19th century America plays no bearing upon their argument. Lincoln also did think about the issue of mental inferiority and whether blacks degraded social status had anything to do with this perceived difference in intellect.

It is also mentioned that the Emancipation Proclamation did not set all the slaves free, just those in the states in rebellion. They use this as a criticism of Lincoln when in fact it was the only thing Lincoln could have done. To order all to be free--including those of the border states--would have risked pushing those border states into the arms of the Confederacy. It was an politically smart move.

Another criticism levied at Lincoln was that he did not fight the war to set blacks free. This is true. He fought to preserve the Union. This of course, was the only thing he could do. Without a nation, he could not affect the change needed to remove the manacles of slavery from the nation's body. Therefore, his ultimate goal HAD to be the preservation of the Union.

Abraham Lincoln was not a perfect man. No person is. Not Ghandi, not Martin Luther King, and certainly not any other famous figure of history.Human beings are flawed creatures.We have become so accustomed to viewing Lincoln as a marble stature that we forget that he bled, he cried, he laugh. In short, he was a MAN.


But what made Abraham Lincoln great--and for that matter, any widely admired person of history--was his ability to transcend his fragilities as a man to accomplish something that benefitted mankind. His selflessness in his service to this nation, his magnanimity towards his foes, and his political genius in dealing with the variety of characters in his cabinet, in the army, congress, and the general population.

If Lincoln failed, he would have gone down in history as one of the worst Presidents. But he did not. This most unlikely of Presidents( he served but one term in the US House of Representatives to go along with a few terms in the Illinois House) became our greatest President. How lucky we were.

Greatness is sometimes thrushed upon a man by the circumstances in which he is thrown into. For Lincoln, that challenge was the Civil War. Fortunately for us, he proved to be the equal to this daunting task.