On February 12th, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky, one of the greatest Presidents and preeminent men in our nation's history was born.
Abraham Lincoln embodied every aspect of the American Dream. Born into poverty the likes of which we rarely if ever see here today, he rose to the heights of national prominence and power.
Once there, he exhibited an understanding of the Dream of which few others have ever been in possession; certainly no one in his time grasped it as fully. He charted for our nation a dangerous course to a distant safe harbor that only he could see, and then successfully guided us through the tumultuous storms of war and delivered us safely home.
And by so doing, he bestowed upon every man, woman and child every aspect of its, for some, long denied fundamental bounty.
The Civil War took a terrible toll on the nation and the man, that few people could have possibly envisioned, and fewer still could have borne. It bore into and wore down Lincoln moreso even than it would have most, because he took so personally each and every horrific aspect of the War he was seen to have single-handedly incepted.
He resolutely insisted that the internal conflagration was a necessary evil required to save the Union, even as everyone around him advised that it was the road only to ruination.
Each battle, of which there were hundreds, and each death, of which there were hundreds of thousands, chipped away at the edifice of the man.
The fate of Lincoln's family cut further still. He had four children, and lost three before they reached adulthood, and had a wife who slowly descended into madness.
But through and despite it all, he stood strong and steadfast in the face of a nation rending at the seams and engulfed in flames, and delivered us all to the other side, better, stronger and freer than we were before.
And in the process, he delivered a nascent Republican Party to the very pinnacle of governmental power, and with the ascent came a future in the American political realm.
The Party was born in 1856 of Democrats and Whigs who had an antipathy for slavery that was met with mere apathy or outright advocacy thereof in their old political haunts. So they left to form this new convene, predicated on delivering completely the abolition of the Peculiar Institution, to furnish the fruits of Constitutional liberty to those to whom it had been denied for too long.
The price of doing so was high, but as no one understood better than Lincoln, the price of not doing so was higher still.
And no individual paid that price more fully than Lincoln himself.
The War Between the States came to an end on April 9th, 1865, at which point Lincoln had probably given all he could. John Wilkes Booth's bullet, delivered five days later and taking its ultimate toll early into the sixth, was the last terrible blow to a man who had already been dealt so many, and who may very well have already fired his last, best shot.
Though one would have always been ill served to ever think of Lincoln's fortitudinal reserves as having been drained to the last.
What is not at all in doubt is the profound impact that this profound man had on our country, its history, its legacy, and its future.
Rest In Peace, Good Sir, and to you, again, go the heartfelt thanks of a grateful nation.
