Remembering Lincoln

David Shribman looks at the man who gave the United States a second founding:

GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- He was a man of faint faith, and yet he is remembered as the greatest believer in American history. He was a man of jokes and gags, and yet he harbored more hurt, more sadness, more loss, than any public man of his time or any other. He was an uncertain man, and yet he is remembered for articulating the great certainties in our national life. He was a humble man, and yet he is acclaimed as the greatest American of all time.

Abraham Lincoln was born 198 years ago, which is about the least remarkable thing you can say about the man with the stainless soul who steeled the Union for its struggle for survival, who thought through the difficulties of emancipation and reconciliation, even if the former made the latter more difficult, and who spoke of bonds of affection, mystic chords of memory and the greater angels of our nature -- three of the most evocative phrases in American history, all the more astonishing when you consider that they appeared in one luminous paragraph.
Read the rest here.

UPDATE: Apologies for the earlier post regarding Lincoln's birthday. That's what happens when I write posts in the early morning.