The Man Who Made Us Whole

Added to the intimidating patrioitism of Lincoln must be Robert E. Lees': who, smirked Larry McMurtrey, in the proxy voice of Pea Eye in his Pulitzer prizewinning novel, Lonesome Dove, "freed the slaves." It was at Gettysburg that Lincoln, for all purposes, declared the war over, and considerably before Appomatox; and where Lee, who graduated top of his class, West Point; prosecuted the strategy of marching dense confederate formations across a wide-open field concentrated with massed Union Artillery - a designed killing field, if you will.
Could the Union have been preseved save those solid, spirited, agile, tough battallions been blasted into the void? The answer is axiomatic, as the self-concious apology to posterity that the Gettysburg Address is, echoes.
The ardor of their sacrifice is appreciated by Lincoln, who, with utter conviction, summarises "this Hallowed Ground", and yet is unfaltering in his conviction that it was worth it. Had he lived he might have been surprised that what may have struck him as apparent, no one in posterity guessed at. Such was the towering charisma of Robert E. Lee, his grasp of the future, and his awful patriotism.

There IS something Lincolnesque about Obama. And how ironic that he comes back to haunt the bankrupt Neo-Confederacy which has haunted and leveraged this nation since at least the Reagan Administration, and which has its roots in the GOP "Southern Strategy" ("Come on over, Dixiecrats!")instituted by Nixon in the '60's. It's as if Lincoln has been resurrected as a 21st Century black man who must struggle to free the nation from the chains of the Bush/Cheney Neo-Confederacy which eviscerated the Bill of Rights, gave trillions in tax cuts to the super-rich, sought to crush labor, fomented war for profit, ruled by fear, and celebrated perception over reality. In a sense, this nation is STILL fighting the Civil War, and the Confederacy has ruled the federal government for much of the past 30 years. At the same time, Obama, in the spirit of Lincoln AND MLK, is struggling to effect a workable peace and reconstruction, one which recognizes, fosters, and furthers the rights of man...and woman. This versus the previous regime, which sought to make wages slaves of the lower 80% while fooling the faithbased into voting against their wallets. This struggle of light and darkness continues, and the outcome remains in doubt.

To The Neo-Raven, who believes that the civil war was not fought over the "existance or the abolishment" [sic] of slavery: to quote the superlative Confederate cavalry general, Nathan B. Forrest, "I thought we were fighting to keep our ***." Obviously secession occurred for that very reason. Usually only modern Confederates try to forget that reality and cover up their ancestors' love of and devotion to slavery as a way of life. That unreality leads them to preserve the two most prominent Confederate characteristics: belligerence and supreme certainty that wrong ideas are right.

Thought provoking -- I may not agree with your occasional ranting screeds, but I always appreciate your unapologetic approach to the topic at hand. Despite the piles of Lincoln biographies out there I encourage you to try your hand. Your British upbringing and education permits a less sentimentalized view of U.S history and, as is often the case with conscientious self-made citizens, you take less on faith than us home grown folk do. In a biography of one larger than life but long dead I'm hoping the author has the skill to re-create the time and place of his subject and invite me into it; let me see and smell it. We underestimate just how strange the land of a different time is. If the reader can somehow inhabit it he might begin to understand in a more visceral way the person struggling within it. I think you may have something valuable to add here.

Many patriots these days lament that the Republican Party has ???lost its way??? and ???gone wrong.??? It has ???diverged??? from the fiscally responsible, small government philosophy of Republican heroes like Robert Taft whom Eisenhower???s handlers finagled out of the nomination for President in 1952. We are told that is why today???s Republican Establishment hates Dr. Ron Paul with such a passion; that they hate him because, like Taft, he is the quintessential Republican. Patriots who say that are mistaken, of course. The reason the Republican Establishment hates Dr. Paul is precisely that he is not a traditional, mainstream Republican, that his platform of freedom is an aberration. The Republican Party didn???t ???go wrong,??? didn???t ???go left.???

It has been wrong from the beginning, from the day it was founded. From the beginning, the Republican Party has worked without deviation for bigger, more imperial government, for higher taxes, for more wars, for more totalitarianism. From the beginning, the Republican Party has been Red.


http://www.newswithviews.com/Stang/alan30.htm

http://www.lneilsmith.org/abelenin.html

Seriously, please do some research before you write your article. LIncoln was born into a cabin in 1809 and lived in Kentucky until 1816. He was only 7 years old when he left. He was not hired out by his father. He was too small.

From 1816 until 1830 Lincoln lived in a small one room cabin in southern Indiana. Everyone can visit the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial in Indiana to see that site.

For goog reading I recommend:
"The Early Life of Lincoln" by Ida Minerva Turbell published in 1896

"Vindicating Lincoln" stomps on Hitchens & his pathetic attempts at revisionism.
Remember this is the Hitchens that was vehemently for war, thinks that Hillary as SoS is a "ludicrous embarrassment", and was both for and against BHO.
Hardly a stable member of the whining class.

Mr. Hitchens, I have to wonder if we'd now have a cure for all cancers if you'd become a research scientist, but I am selfishly glad you are still a thinker, journalist and essayist.

Great article, Mr.Hitchens. Thank You.
Over the next four or eight years, I sincerely hope you continue to enlighten us with your insights into the Obama administration's hits and misses.