No, I Had To Work Yesterday

Just Another Holiday?

Just Another Holiday?Like most people yesterday I went to work. Then I got a call from a friend who had the day off. I asked if he was sick. He then reminded me that it was Lincoln's Birthday. It had slipped my mind because I always work it. However, some people have this day off. This makes me snicker. Perhaps I am cynical at heart, and my feelings of patriotism and pride in my country do not run deep enough. Or, it could be that I suffer from a mix of envy and purposelessness on this day, a celebration of America's most popular leader? The image of this sober minded man, a face that looks as if it were cut from stone almost leaves me mystified at times. He is as iconic and mythological as he is recorded in the pages of U.S. history. He is associated with stove pipe hats and honesty. He is the man who freed the slaves and led our country through the worst moment in its history. But who is Lincoln?

Lincoln Who?

I began to wonder about the holiday. How do you even celebrate Lincoln's Birthday? There are no songs, no special church services or meals, or traditions other than a friend or two bitching because they can't have the day off. All I could recall was a small arts and crafts project from the 4th grade. My class was asigned to cut out out silhouettes on black construction paper. I think my best friend Ralph cut a bullet hole into his and was sent to the principles office. That was it though. Nothing else came to mind. The big deal was President's Day. That was were the action was at. I got to play Thomas Jefferson in a school play. I had a special costume and I was taken to McDonalds afterward for my performance. It was a great day.

So I began to look for info on today's holiday. There is a traditional wreath laying cerimony in his birthplace of Hodgenville, and in Washington. Other than that it is like crikets. This passed over me when I first learned this like water.

Histronics and History

I began to think of him saving America as we know it. I also thought about how he ruled the country, that is suspending habeas corpus and and seizing the telegraph offices in Maryland and shutting down trains. Also consider that he overstepped his boundries by blocking Southern ports and esentially declairing war. Basically Lincoln is known most for his Emancipation Proxlamation and Gettysburg Address. He is thought of as the great healer of a nation and the man who freed black America. Those shining moments are part of a background of very conservative man, however. In reviewing sources I found a wonderful article from the Partisan Review. It sums up much of what I learned in school and more. Lincoln was in truth a cautious man who never spoke exstemperainously in public, prefering to write all speaches with great care, often doing many rewrites. He never jumped into ventures that he had not thought out carefully. So accomplishments of of these two examples of presidential leadership have a rather hypnotic effect on the mind of most admirers and confuses them to learn that he came to fame calling not for the end of slavery but for its restriction from territorial lands... The modern mind gets clumsy when distinguishing prudence from hypocrisy.

Missing the Mark and Resolution

Lincoln is mysterious, even though he is the most talked about President of the 19th century, and perhaps of all time. For everthing written about him he seems frozen in the ice of his war time accomplishments. He is the man, who loved theatre, and poetry. He is the man who married the daughter of a slave owner, and who later during the early part of the war ordered the arrests of thousands of citizens who spoke out publicly against him. He is the man who cut himself off from his cabinet and functioned almost without regard for the advise of his most close and personal friends. He is without an equal, but much of that may be the result more of the times than the man. Granted, he was a great politician. But that is not why people remember him. But like great leaders so much happens that some it changes everything in a very defining way. It is a history of theatrics and not the hellish grind of every other drop of blood spilt in the Civil War that is remembered. On the other hand there were hundereds of bad calls that no one talks about. People remain unschooled in these. On the large side they included hiring bad generals and quarreling with cabinet members. On the small side they were perhaps as mundane as office work. Thus his signature is both large and small, yet always history. He made many mistakes that ended costing the lives of hundereds of thousands of Americans. He was terribly complex. Nothing about him was like the black and white images handed down to us. He could show great compassion for a fallen friend and then on hearing of war crimes show no emotion at all. In one famous example (late in the war mind you) he was informed of how the federal army had pillaged, plundered, burned, and raped its way through the defenseless Shenandoah Valley in 1864, Lincoln only conveyed "the thanks of a nation" to General Philip Sheridan, the chief plunderer, and added his personal gratitude.

Its just hard to understand this man. The more that is discovered the deeper the mystery becomes. He seems lost in smoke of time and bad school room books. It's a strange feeling because here we have this day set aside and it seems poorly concieved. I feel bad for old Abe too. After all of that he get this minor spot on the calendar. Its like Valentines Day, or the inocuous Labor day I at least get that one off.

Any thoughts?

Here are the links to the text I borrowed.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo26.html

http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2003/1/whitaker.html