Preface

This book is more than just a march down memory lane. It is certainly not a search and destroy mission as are some historical efforts. It is really a question for an understanding of the man able to write:

"He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help..."

Chapter 1 - IN THE BEGINNING

One day the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln would become the president of what many have called, and continue to call, the Promised Land. However, anyone voicing such a thought on the day of his birth, the twelfth of February 1809, would have been laughed at and told by any backwoods listener that he didn't have a possum's chance. Picture this future president growing up dirt poor with a shirt made of bear skins, a coonskin hat and dreams of something better than what was offered. The one-room notched log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky certainly wasn't much of a springboard for success...

.Many of his friends chose ignorance and could neither read nor write. He was known to comment that they were not too dumb to learn, but rather too lazy. "Some," he said, "were so lazy they couldn't have raised a good stink even if they were a skunk." I can easily imagine Lincoln, with sadness for their lack of discipline, quoting Proverbs, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he."

Chapter 2 - THE MAKING OF THE MAN

Who was Lincoln, the man? When he was born what did God have in mind? All the hours he spent in church listening to sermons certainly had their influence. In all his decisions when he was president, he must have been guided by a Jesus who did not just look at the Via Dolorosa, but walked it. Who did not just partake of the Last Supper, but served it. Abe's Biblical learning must have underlined the thought that prayers must be more than just the turning of a prayer wheel.

He had no doubt that the only thing that held a man back was not wanting something badly enough and lack of preparation. "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax," he would often comment.

Whenever someone would comment that slavery wasn't so bad, he would reply that if it was so great the speaker should volunteer to be one.

Chapter 3 - EARLY POLITICS

His political philosophy, that government must do for the people what they sometimes could not or would not do for themselves, remained largely constant down through the years. He felt strongly that an elected official should do something more than just bay at the moon.

He once suggested that many politicians and their campaign promises were like pants salesmen. "I've got pants for sale that are a perfect fit. Big enough to lift any man and small enough to fit any boy." Lincoln went on to concur that id don't make any difference because they didn't keep their promises anyway.

While Abe was not shy about his faith, neither did he believe that religions should be overly inserted in any campaign. By way of emphasizing this attitude, one day while debating with a preacher who was running against him, his opponent stood up in church and said, "Everyone who wants to go to heaven, please stand." Lincoln remained seated. The preacher continued. "Everyone who wants to go to hell, please stand." Lincoln again did not rise. "Just where are you going, Mr... Lincoln?" he was pointedly asked, "Me," he said with a sly grin on his face, "I'm goin' to congress."

Chapter 4 - BEFORE THE WAR YEARS

Calling a nation a nation does not make it one. A revolution had been fought to break away from England less than a century earlier. And although George Washington had refused a kingship, the South now felt it was all happening again. Some far away place telling it what it could, or could not do.

William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the Liberator in Boston, Massachusetts, and co-founder of the Society, on replying to the complaint that he was too much on fire, simply suggested that it was necessary because he was surrounded by icebergs. Too often there was more than enough fire, on both sides, and not enough quenching to solve the matter.

It was a time of Charles Darwin and more powerful microscopes. Even more powerful telescopes swept the dust of space. Man was finding new worlds under his feet and above his head. Meanwhile he could find no peace or common sense. Why? Because men do not often enough look for reasons and then do. Rather they do and then look for a reason for what they have already done.

Chapter 5 - THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEARS

With his Presbyterian background, Lincoln might well have recalled that day in sixteenth century Scotland at the port of St. Andrews when John Knox fell to his knees on the dock and cried out, "God give me Scotland or I die." That may well have been how Abe felt, "God, give me the Union or it will die."

There is this thing about leadership that does not mean every idea has to be credited to the leader, but certainly there develops an understanding of what is accepted and even underlined...Nor does their influence stop with what they want to accomplish. Often it extends with equal vehemence to what they are against. An egotistical, yet selfless president, Andrew Jackson vetoed re-chartering a National Bank. Theodore Roosevelt saw businessmen building fiefdoms and with an unwillingness to see a kind of Middle Ages repeated, he went after them with unflagging vigor. In no time at al he had begun forty-four-anti-trust proceedings.

And then, there are those candidates not elected who might have contributed to a significant change of events had they won. Our entry into World War 1 was much later than it probably would have been if flamboyant Teddy Roosevelt, in another try at the presidency, had not failed to unseat Woodrow Wilson. In 1940, the Republican Party candidate Wendell Willkie was a strong libertarian and a progressive advocate on race relations. Had he been elected, would there have been Civil Rights legislation sooner?

Chapter 6 - THE WAR (The Beginning)

To those who sought to blame Lincoln for the war, he simply stated that he did not seek it but neither would he be held hostage to peace at any price. "I was elected not to pursue my own delight but to uphold the Constitution."

He tried to in every way he could to convince any who were pro-war that it was a giant mistake...but his sermon for peace could find no one in the pew. He only managed to solidify their animosity. A script for war was being written beneath a howl of emotions. It was to Lincoln's credit that four years later, when the war finally came to an end, he had managed to maintain his attitude of forgiveness. But then, he was only practicing who he was.

War is always about some men dying and other men talking. The Civil War was not dissimilar in this respect.

Chapter 7 - THE WAR (The Middle Years)

Incredibly, few had envisioned all the maimed and wounded on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. Bullets would now proliferate because ballots had failed, until finally one day, like all wars, it would come to a final bitter end.

Each day, as the conflict continued cold to the cry for peace, he must have consider a truth he had spoken more than once: "Without slavery, the rebellion could never have existed. Without slavery, it could not continue."

In July of 1863 he invited the people of the United States to invoke the influence of there Holy Spirit to help and guide the government to greater adequacy. The Union was at stake.

Lincoln believed that arrogance and over-zealous ambition warped the spirit, "We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it." In the middle of a war an arrogant president would have been an invitation to disaster.

Chapter 8 - THE WAR (The Last Years)

A group of African-Americans gave him a Bible. As he accepted it, he said, "In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter are to found portrayed in it."

Lincoln worried right up until his last day about the new problems peace would bring. Plantations were in ruins. Slaves, with no skills or promises of employment, would be asked to make a living. The Emancipation Proclamation had been proclaimed but still held no legal status. Limbo for four million non-citizens was a real possibility.

Chapter 9 - AFTER THE WAR

After the assassination, lawlessness wore a general's hat and was in complete control. Washington, D.C. was engulfed in riots, no-longer the place of safety that it had been no more than fifteen years earlier when President Zachary Taylor had walked the streets alone, unguarded and unafraid. A soldier shot a man for saying of the assassination, "It served him right." Vice President Andrew Johnson was now president and his plate was full.

Much has been made of the fact that Lincoln's death took place on Good Friday, and that while Christ died for the world, Lincoln died for his country. Certainly he was no saint, but he was a good and kindly man who brought his Christian heart to Washington along with his head.

The Confederacy, this government of eleven states, had almost brought down a nation. It never had more than 750,000 troops, nowhere near the size of the Northern fighting force. To move troops and supplies, their 9,000 miles of railroad tracks were certainly inadequate to the task. The North had two and one half times that. They printed money, but with blocked ports and shrinking exports it soon had little worth, until finally it was nearly worthless. They were courageous, but courage by itself, against overwhelming odds, is almost always bound to fail.

EPILOGUE

The United States has endured to celebrate its bicentennial anniversary and move into a third century of democratic survival. The memory of Lincoln has survived equally as well. There should be little doubt his belief-driven attitudes, words and actions were monumental in their impact, even after his assassination.

There will always be those who continue to ignore his faith-fed comments as if they never existed. It is enough to counter that he spoke too often and too well of God for the fact to be ignored.