A Lincoln Tribute

I’m a day late with it. As most of you know, yesterday was the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Former Senator and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern has recently completed a biography of the man he says is our greatest President, a judgment many of us share.

Yesterday at Huffington Post McGovern paid tribute to Lincoln. Here’s part of what McGovern wrote. I think it will interest you and I pass it on as my way of paying tribute to President Abraham Lincoln.

. . . One could cite a number of reasons why Lincoln remains such a highly regarded president to all the generations since his assassination so many years ago.

Certainly one of those factors has been the inspired and masterful speeches that came from his heart, mind, and soul.

No other president possessed such compelling literary power and grace. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson would rate second and third among the presidents who crafted their own addresses.

I recall vividly during my years in the excellent public schools of Mitchell, South Dakota, being required to memorize and recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. That address stirred my respect for Lincoln then as it does today. It belongs with the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights among our greatest state papers.

Each of us might add others to that list. In my case I would add Lincoln's two inaugurals and the farewell addresses of two generals who served as president, George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.

Lincoln worked diligently on his speeches. He would begin by reading the better speeches of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and he would draw upon his knowledge of the Bible, Shakespeare, Aesop's Fables and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. He also kept at hand a file of his own previous speeches. He would then begin to write in longhand a draft of his speech, which he would further refine each time he read it.

This process of reading selected works, digesting the most stirring and eloquent passages of other speeches, and then laboriously writing his own thoughts and words could sometimes take weeks or even months.

When he finally had a draft that satisfied him he would call in a critic -- perhaps his secretary of state, William H. Seward -- and ask him to read the speech aloud in Lincoln's presence. Then the president would read it aloud to Seward and the two men would discuss where the draft might be improved.

It was through this give and take that Seward suggested a phrase for Lincoln's first inaugural address that in the final draft became the now immortal phrase "the better angels of our nature."