We Are Coming Father Abraham 300,000 Strong- In Honor Of Old Abe Lincoln On His Birthday

 

 …he, Father Abraham he, pug-ugly he (damn, that age of photography, that Mathew Brady and his merry band, that damn warts and all pre-digital photography, when a painterly touch might have made him, well, just plain), yes, warts and all he (and thus no catch for gentile Kentucky bourbon 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 mountain boys, Harlan County roughs, picked that up nigra expression too, and went to their graves with that on their lips, jesus.), 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 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 (hell, no, he would still be stuck in Springfield or maybe practicing law in bell-weather podunk Peoria), or a righteous son of Captain John Brown, late of Kansas and Harpers Ferry (he had no desire to share the Captain’s blood-soaked fate), but 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, sounds familiar) and were able to touch up a picture or two 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 proud to erase the dripping blood and canker sore from his homeland, but in a revolutionary way nevertheless, break down slavery’s house divided, broke it down, no quarter given when the deal went down. 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.