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Put me down as a Lincoln man.

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Abraham Lincoln - Annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862.

Lincoln was never an ideologue. He was a very practical man. He never viewed an opponent or policy on the basis of some puerile notion of doctrinal purity.

I read recently that he and Jefferson were the only presidents whose writings could be considered as literature. I agree. Jefferson we can understand. But Lincoln with only a second grade education is remarkable. Primarily an autodidact he was an eminently wise and humble man. The late Clinton Rossiter referred to him as “that mystic mingling of star and clod,” and “the martyred Christ of Democracy’s Passion Play.”

A characteristic of Lincoln, especially after his first two years in office was in the words of Edwin Black (quoted in Ronald White’s The Eloquent President) his vanishing ego.

By that he meant Lincoln’s reluctance to use personal pronouns. Commenting on the Gettysburg Address White wrote: “The address is full of first-person references, but every one is plural. Ten times Lincoln uses the plural we and three times us. . . . In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln says nothing of himself.

At a first hearing or reading, we are aware of what is being said and not of who is saying it. Yet at a second or third hearing or reading, Lincoln’s character, the ethos or credibility, which is the first principle of Aristotle’s rhetoric, is everywhere present. His very reticence to speak about himself - how different from modern politicians - is what makes his voice by the end of the address so decisive.”

Get that, not a single personal pronoun in The Gettysburg Address! The Second Inaugural consisted of 701 words, 501 of which are one syllable. The Bible and theological language were used throughout. God is mentioned 14 times. The Bible is quoted 4 times and prayer is invoked 3 times. And yet, Lincoln used personal pronouns only twice as in “I trust” and “myself.” There were several uses of plural pronouns. White suggests it’s in poor taste to use the first person singular: “how different from modern politicians.” Our previous president had no compunction about using the first person singular. In one speech Obama used a personal pronoun, “I,” “Me,” “Mine,” 199 times, or every 12 seconds. How far we’ve fallen.

I’ve always loved this line from Lincoln - “So long as I have been here [White House], I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.’’ There is no doubt that Lincoln was the least egotistical and most humble of all our presidents.

And I’ll never forget the words of the late Richard Hofstadter:

“The great prose of the presidential years came from a soul that had been humbled. Lincoln’s utter lack of personal malice during these years, his humane detachment, his tragic sense of life, have no parallel in political history.” Just so!

Personally, I think it a travesty that his birthday is not a national holiday. Instead of that insipid ‘President’s Day.’

From the Texas Ordinance of Secession:

A declaration of the causes
which impel the State of Texas to secede
from the Federal Union

The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A. D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal States thereof,

The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits—a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy.

Last two paragraphs:
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States. By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look for protection, but to God and her own sons - We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freeman of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.

Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.

I’m a Texan, born and bred, but remain a Lincoln man.