THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - Honest Abe
HIS life began with disadvantage, and in middle years it was marked with failure.
Yet today, when Americans list their finest Presidents his name is unfailingly at the top.
Abraham Lincoln was born on 12th February, 1809 (a Sunday) in a one-room shack in Nolin Creek, Kentucky. His father was a drunken drifter, and his mother illiterate. When relatives took their turn to nurse the new-born, one handed the squealing child back to his mother with the observation, "He'll never come to much".
Her dismal prediction seemed doomed to fulfilment in the life of the adult Abraham, failing in turn as a soldier, a teacher, a lawyer, and also as a politician.
In the political realm he was beaten in elections local and national; yet, by dint of personality and perseverance, he found himself in the White House, as the nation was about to be torn asunder in the Civil War.
Largely self- taught, he gleaned legal insights through studying the writings of Blackstone, the supreme authority on English law, and his knowledge of ways human and divine from the pages of the Bible. He brought his hard-earned wisdom to the momentous challenges facing the nation in 1860.
The hotly-debated question of the time was this: "Is slavery something a state legislature is free to permit within its realms, or can it be overruled by the federal government?"
Some, like the noble soldier, Robert E, Lee, hated slavery with a passion, yet defended the right of an individual state to act as it saw fit. Lincoln saw no such subtlety .
The institution was abominable, and must be ended. As a youth he had seen a slave illtreated on a Mississippi riverboat, and made a silent vow, "If ever I get a chance to hit this thing, I'll hit it hard." In the White House, his opportunity came.
Through a bloody war, and at times when the seat of government in Washington was itself endangered, he kept the spirit of the nation buoyant.
He was prepared for a long struggle, knowing his cause to be the cause of right. There is, he grandly announced, no ground between right and wrong except battle-ground. When re-elected in 1864, with a huge majority, he voiced his confidence in God's purposes.
In his second Inaugural address are these rousing lines: "Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray - that this mighty scourge of war might speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'"
Murdered only five says after Lee's surrender, Lincoln was buried in Springfield, Illinois. His remains were taken westward by train, and in town after town, multitudes gathered to pay their tribute. In one town, a coloured woman raised her boy high on her shoulders and told him, "Take a good long look, sonny, he died for you"
The words turn our thoughts to another victim, who died to free us from the slavery of sin
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Weather for Coleraine
Wednesday 08 February 2012
Today
Heavy rain
Temperature: 5 C to 7 C
Wind Speed: 32 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Light showers
Temperature: 9 C to 11 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South west
