Читать книгу Why We Love Lincoln онлайн

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Our fleet, in its voyage around the world, found no record of such a man in any of the lands of its visitations. Each nation, each epoch, each race, has its hero. But there is none like Lincoln. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Cromwell—how cold their glory seems to his, how immeasurably smaller their place in the affections of mankind?

And, while America was getting ready to honor Lincoln, none might pretend to understand his people who had not first discovered what it is in his character and in ours that, even in this day of restless commercialism, makes us love him above comparison in the story of the world’s great men—love him for his poverty, for his simplicity, for his humanity, for his fidelity, for his justice, for his plainness, for his life and for his death.

By sheer force of character, conscience-inspired, Abraham Lincoln rose from abject depths of squalid environment to become the most august figure in American history, and perhaps the most significant and lovable personality in the annals of mankind.