In every crisis, whether it’s September 11 or World War II, it is amazing how people return to Lincoln."īy March 1865 (until 1937, Presidents were generally inaugurated in March), America had been flayed by four years of a war that had lasted longer than anyone thought it would, but whose end, at last, seemed in sight. "He had the knack of asking these simple but very profound questions. And the audience of that day picked it up." More than 130 years after Lincoln’s assassination, that quality still moves people powerfully. But once he began to speak, what people sensed was his integrity. Everything about him was against his being a powerful speaker. "He was the average American, with only one year of education, a man who was really quite ugly in a certain sense-could he ever have campaigned today?-tall, awkward, gawky, clothes ill-fitting, with a tenor voice, almost a falsetto, and yet he was a huge man for his day, 6 feet 4 inches tall. White’s fascination with the 16th President was sparked at a 1993 seminar. In his new book, San Francisco Theological Seminary sees the speech as key to understanding Lincoln’s greatness. And yet Lincoln thought this was his best effort." White does too. White, Jr., "Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address has lived under the shadow of the Gettysburg Address.
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