The Truth

Dorris Goodwin’s presidential biography of Abraham Lincoln is one of the best books that I have read last year. It was slow going at first, but I was quickly swept into the story of Lincoln and what should rightly be called this country’s second revolution.

Lincoln was intelligent, complex, and perhaps one of the greatest people this country, or any country could produce.

Of all the things that Lincoln said, nothing moved me quite as much as what he said to conclude his second presidential address.

He said:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

There is an ideal somewhere in here that I cannot identify, nor describe, that I aspire to. I hope that you find something in this and aspire to it as well.