We Are Coming Father Abraham 300,000 Strong- In Honor Of Old
Abe Lincoln On His Birthday
…he, Father Abraham he, pug-ugly he that no monument
chiseled stone could render beautiful (damn, that age of photography, that
Mathew Brady and his merry band, that damn warts and all pre-digital
photography, when a painterly touch, say Winslow Homer’s, might have made him,
well, just plain). Yes, warts and all, sitting arched in stone in judgment,
eternity self-judgment (did he do this or that right to further furrow his brow
first of all, overall, preliminary assessment right on union and
abolition). He, furrowed and pug-ugly,
thus no catch for gentile Kentucky bourbon belle daughters, or so it seemed,
all Kentuck born and Illini-bred (where the best they could do was say nigra
when talking about the slave problem. And later, much later the sons and
grandsons of poor as dirt Kentuck hills and hollows mountain boys, Harlan
County roughs, picked that up nigra expression too, and went to their graves
with that on their lips, jesus.). He all keep the races split, let them, the
blacks, (nigras, remember) go back to Canaan land, go back to Africa, go to
some not union place but keep them out of
Chi town (sounds familiar) had a conversion, maybe not a conversion so
much as a lining up of his beliefs with
his walk the walk talk.
So he ran for president, President of the United States, not
as a son of William Lloyd Garrison, all Newburyport prissy and hell- bent on
damning the Constitution, his Abe well-thumbed, well-read constitution , or
some reformed wild boy Liberty man
barely contained in the Fremont Republican dust but a busted out Whig when
whiggery went to ground, (hell, no, on that tack, otherwise he would still be
stuck in Springfield or maybe practicing law in bell-weather podunk Peoria,
although he would note what that burg had to say and move slowly). Nor was he
some righteous son, Thoreau or Emerson-etched son, of fiery-maned Calvinist sword-in-hand
black avenging angel Captain John Brown, late of Kansas blood wars and Harpers
Ferry liberation fight (he had no desire to share the Captain’s blood-soaked
fate, mocked his bloody efforts in fact, as if only immense bloods would render
the national hurts harmless when later the hills, hollows and blue-green
valleys reeked of blood and other stenches).
His goal, simple goal (in the abstract), was to hold the
union together, and to curb that damn land hunger slavery, that national abyss.
And since they ran politics differently in those days (no women, latinos,
nigras to fuss over) and were able to touch up a picture or two (and stretch
his biographic facts a bit when the “wide awakes” awoke) he won, barely won but
won. And then all hell broke loose, and from day one, from some stormy March
day one, he had to bend that big long boney pug-ugly body to the winds, his
winds.
And he did, not unequivocally, not John Brown prophet proud,
fearlessly facing his gallows and his maker, to erase the dripping blood and
canker sore from his homeland, but in a revolutionary way nevertheless, broke
down slavery’s house divided, broke it down, no quarter given when the deal
went down. So more like some latter day Oliver Cromwell (another warts and all man)
pushing providence forward with a little kick. More like old Robespierre
flaming the masses with the new dispensation, the new word slave freedom. Kept
freeing slaves as he went along, kept pushing that freedom envelope, kept
pushing his generals south and west and east and tightening , anaconda
tightening, the noose on the old ways until Johnny Reb cried uncle, cried his
fill when righteous Sherman and his cutthroat bummers got to work too. Yes, old
Father Abraham, the last of the revolutionary democrats, the last of the
serious ones, who couldn’t say black better that nigra, and never could, but
knew the old enlightenment freedom word, knew it good.
…and now he belongs to the ages, and rightfully so, warts
and all.
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