The greatest challenge since that facing Lincoln!

FRIDAY, JULY 12, 2024

Also, JFK:  It's known as Lincoln's Farewell Address. We know it from the closing pages of Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, Volume II.

The president-elect was leaving for Washington. He spoke to neighbors and friends from the back of his train at the Springfield rail station:

Springfield, Illinois, February 11, 1861

My friends—No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. 

I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington...

You can read one version of the full address by clicking here. In Sandburgh's rendering, Lincoln closed his brief remarks by saying this:

Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.

With a young nation on the brink of war, he saw himself confronting a task "greater than that which rested upon [General, then President] Washington."

According to Sandburgh, the last stop in Illinois was at Tolono station. Volume Two of his master work ends with this:

Tolono station was the last stop in Illinois. There he said, “I am leaving you on an errand of national importance, attended as you are aware with considerable difficulties. Let us believe as some poet has expressed it, ‘Behind the cloud the sun is still shining.’ I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

And there were voices, "Good-by, Abe."

At that stop, Lincoln declared himself to be "leaving you on an errand of national importance." Though of course, as it turned out, no, he didn't return.

We had started this with a thought to relating President Lincoln's words to the monumental task we ourselves now face. We refer to the task of convincing denizens of Blue America that it wasn't a good idea to abandon the traditional journalistic / political rule against the use of the L-bombs:

LIAR, but also LIES.

Is convincing us liberals of that idea commensurate with the task which once rested upon General Washington? We're not completely sure how to rank such things.

That said, as we post Lincoln's sacred words, it occurs to us that we should all be fully aware of the challenging task we ourselves face today, as this time of political and cultural crisis. 

Lincoln saw his Illinois neighbors as friends. That said, there was no cable news in his day. There had been no "democratization of media," with the concomitant striving for maximum profit through separation of a large, sprawling continental nation into a set of angry, squabbling, disinformed rival entities.

With respect to JFK, we're going to wait for tomorrow! A new book about the way the men of his family were apparently raised helps describe what we would describe as a human / American tragedy.

"Behind the cloud the sun is still shining?" According to the historical record, Abraham Lincoln said that!

For extra credit only: According to photographic evidence, a plaque in Tolono says this.