Abraham Lincoln
any biographer worth his or her title would tell you I can't appreciate Abraham Lincoln in less than four books, but I'm going to try to do it in a paragraph. mainly because I've been fascinated with him, well, nearly all my life. obviously not all my life! the first few years I was busy with learning to make noises people understood, learning how to scoot, crawl, stand, walk, and run, learning to speak Portuguese, learning to get away from grownups so I could learn really interesting things like how to get stung by a bee, or strike a match, or what a fresh red pepper right off the plant tastes like when you bite into it, or how animals behave when I was the only human around. and then way before I was ready if you'd've asked me, my parents brought me to this country so my littler brother (my second brother) could be born here and so I could start school here and I never really knew what we were here for, it apparently wasn't any of my business. (we were here because missionaries then got a sabbatical every few years so they can renew their Americanness, and, in particular, so my father could complete his master's degree in theology.) but in any case I was here and among other things I learned the American presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Truman. (later on I was astounded to learn we'd had a bunch more.) of the bunch, Lincoln stood out for me. first there was the whole romantic notion of having in some way started the Civil War, then having kept the country together during the Civil War (it was one of the many puzzles grownups presented: how could he have kept the country together when it clearly split into two countries?), and then getting killed to end the Civil War. history doesn't make a lot of sense when you're six, but it makes as much sense as grownups do. then he was on every penny, the most common coin, so he was clearly the president of the common man, right? no, that was Jackson, who most definitely was not for the common man , no matter what people called him. I think maybe Lincoln attracted me so because he stood for something, he stood for the union of the United States. as far as I knew then, no other president ever stood for anything, they didn't have to, nobody was trying to tear anything away from them. hey, listen! I was learning as fast as I could, and grownups are no damned help! being six is hard work! and the world whirls on and years pass and I go back to Brasil and get yanked out of it again and stuffed into this country and learn to deal with that after a fashion and continue to appreciate Abraham Lincoln. crimeney, he survived having George McClellan as the commanding general of the Union forces! that alone should have been enough to drive him to suicide. once when George McClellan and his command officers were out for a ride (on their horses, they didn't have Harleys), they came to a stream and stopped to discuss how deep it was and whether they should cross it. his aide de camp, Lieutenant George Custer, rode out into the stream which flowed around his horse's legs but not up to his stirrups, and said, "the water is this deep, gentlemen, now whether you will cross it or not is another matter." George McClellan was equally decisive about fighting the War, so Lincoln had to fire him, but first had to put up with his indecision for months. well, the biographers were right, I can't begin to do him justice in a paragraph, but Abraham Lincoln was indeed a great president, such a great president that we couldn't have survived a succession of presidents like him. we prefer our presidents more like we are.
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