The Courage of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama

He was a little-known Senator of slight experience from Illinois. He won the trust of the American people with his articulate sincerity and his open hand always ready for a firm shake and a direct look in the eye. He came to Washington, D.C. by train. He was a rallying point and a lightning rod, and his name was Abraham Lincoln.

Faced with the terrible prospect of a nation divided against itself, a nation founded on the premise that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a nation which categorically denied these rights to a substantial class of society, choosing instead to subjugate them to the yoke of labor and menial and sexual indignity, to parse families in sale down the river, to use their women for their own bestial purposes, their men as if beasts, faced, I say, with this reality, which was combined with a sympathetic but largely apathetic counterpart in the other half of the nation, this courageous President had the vision to see the forces of economy, necessity and humanity in such conflict as would only allow two alternatives, which alternatives were the "yes" or the "no" to this question which had been suppressed but could no longer be suppressed: slavery. Would he have the courage to extend the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to all of the citizens over whom he presided? Would he have the wisdom to perceive the infection which was consuming the humanity of the body politic, and the painful but necessary--indeed the only--procedure which could lance the wound?

To the great benefit and relief of those American people living in the land which called itself the land of freedom but themselves denied the exercise of that freedom--indeed even the exercise of life itself--he did. He was willing to risk all because he perceived that his nation's Constitution was insufficient to protect the freedoms it had been designed to protect. He perceived that to amend that Constitution was an impossibility as long as the United States were divided along the lines of slavery, and that the proponents of slavery--men who claimed that those they enslaved were not "persons"--were willing to fight and die for their peculiar institution, choosing instead to call what they would defend with blood, the sword, and their lives and those of their families, their "way of life". This President of courage perceived that the history of man moves like the history of the rest of the earth: just as the face of the earth changes by massive, slow, imperceptible processes affecting millions of parts at once, and so also the single bolt of lightning can change a mountain to a valley in the moment of a single drop of rain as well as the same is done by countless years and drops of rain.

This man of courage was able to perceive that just as the United States were divided, some day we would be able to say that the United States is whole.

This man of courage was able to perceive that while untold thousands groaned under the yoke of indignity while their wives were raped or sold or murdered before their eyes, their children forcibly exposed to the elements or made sport of by the twisted imagination of the young slaver, the dignity of the human person could be restored by the stroke of the Presidential pen. So the United States was blessed to receive the Emancipation Proclamation, followed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

Friday our little-known Senator, our President with the earnest face, clarity of speech and open palm, the man who traveled by train through Baltimore on his way to Washington stopped with his pen the use of federal funds for the categorical denial in the state of Pennsylvania of the three fundamental rights of the human person which sparked the fuse of 1776 and ended with bombs bursting in air. It was those bombs which illuminated the night sky and told the young patriot who pined in his cell to know that equal rights would be guaranteed to all people.

And today, tomorrow, or some day while we look towards Washington, eager for the news of freedom, our young President may yet sign another Emancipation Proclamation. Barack Obama may yet earn a place alongside Abraham Lincoln, if he has the courage to extend the rights of the Declaration of Independence to all persons in this nation.

If he has the courage, our President can provide the stimulus for a new Constitutional Amendment, one that will guarantee the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all persons of this nation from the beginning of life.

Will he have the courage to protect the largest class of our society, which is at once the meekest and most in need of our protection, as his chosen hero and role-model once did?

Will Barack Obama have the courage to issue a new Emancipation, really to be the next Abraham Lincoln?