At 7:22 in the morning, 150 years ago today, the most brilliant political leader in our country’s history died, hunched over on a stranger’s bed that was too short for his body. He was 56 years old. In that time he accomplished more politically than anyone ever had and anyone ever will.
In the years since, Lincoln has been over-symbolized, clichéd to the point of oblivion. We have taken a man who endured a dismal, melancholic existence in the pursuit of protecting this country, and the ideal that it stands as a bastion for, and have exploited him to the point that his last name is more associated with weird Matthew McConaughey commercials than it is with the man himself.
This is a mistake. We cannot afford to lose him. He was the first great political leader in American history. This is not to take anything away from the likes of George Washington, but G.W. was a general at heart and in practice, Abraham Lincoln was a president. He was a man who could move a crowd to both applause and tears and later make difficult, but necessary, military decisions, and he did it all between jokes.
Those who lead us today, and those who will take over for them soon, should learn lessons from the man who made all of his decisions with the welfare of the citizenry (all of it) in mind. They should emulate the person who wasn’t afraid to surround himself with political opponents and remained steadfast in his purposes in the midst of unimaginable personal tragedy. They should never forget the man who gave his life to ensure that government of the people, by the people and for the people did not perish from the earth.
But none of that will happen. Who he actually was and what he truly stands for will continue to be lost as the man dissolves into the vaccuous world of tropes. Maybe I’m contributing to that by writing this article, and maybe I should not have simply referenced his most famous speech. This trend is not on the path to reversal, but it has to stop. We cannot allow ourselves, as a campus, to think of him as a statue we rub for good luck or a lap we sit on when we graduate.
He lived his life so intensely and so brilliantly, and he deserves to be spoken about as such. His life and what he stood for should be this country’s greatest export.
He deserves to be remembered for who he was and mourned for what more he would have done. He saved us and gave us a credible place in this world, and we should treat his memory as such.
Abraham Lincoln is our country’s most poetic hero. So it is fitting that I finish this love letter with the words of another one of his biggest fans.
“But O heart! heart! heart!/ O the bleeding drops of red,/ Where on the deck my Captain lies,/ Fallen cold and dead.”
Max is a junior majoring in political science and is clearly obsessed with our nation’s 16th president. Are you also a Lincoln enthusiast? Share your thoughts by emailing us at opinion@dailycardinal.com.
