HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. PRESIDENT

Lincoln Mural by Hugo Gellert

We all had heroes when we were younger…. mine was Abraham Lincoln. His name, the image of him, were very much a part of my childhood. It started with my grandmother, a woman who spoke no English but thought of herself as updated in world affairs. When she referred to the President of the United States, she referred to President Lincoln. He was alive and well in her mind.

There was a savings bank in my neighbourhood, the Lincoln Savings Bank. On the ceiling there was a mural of Lincoln leading the slaves to freedom, very much in the style of Moses doing the same thing. (She also spoke of Moses as if he were a kid that grew up next door to her).

The local High School, which I attended, was Abraham Lincoln High School.

The Brigade of brave American volunteers that went off to fight Franco and his fascists in Spain was called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the bravest men I ever met.

So, wherever I went, whatever I did, the image of Abraham Lincoln was forever present.

202 years after his birth, he is still a man I admire, a man whose visions of justice would be welcome in America today.

Happy Birthday Mr. President!

His famous speech in Gettysburg is still an inspiration for all who strive for Statehood and Freedom….

The Gettysburg Address

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- Gettysburg, Pennsylvania – Nov. 19, 1863

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Image of Lincoln by Charles White