Each week Candies Creek Academy learns about two historical events or individuals. This week it is fitting that we are learning about Abraham Lincoln. Here is what our students are learning.
Lincoln the 16th President (1861-1865)
• He was called the “Log Cabin President”.
• He was 6’4″ tall and was considered, to be honest, wise, and funny.
• He often read the Bible.
• His wife was named Mary, and they had four sons, and one died at a young age.
• He practiced law in Illinois and won the presidency in 1860.
• In 1863, He gave the Gettysburg Address and issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
• Lincoln was reelected in 1864.
• On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth.
Tonight, on the eve of another presidential inauguration, I did some thinking about Abraham Lincoln. I remembered that I have a book called “Lincoln’s Devotional”. It is one of the few books that Abraham Lincoln actually penned his signature. I decided to look at Lincoln’s 1st and 2nd inaugural addresses. This first is lengthy compared to the second. There is a great deal leaders and citizens could learn by reading his 1st address. A paragraph that stood out to me is the following.
“Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.”
His second inaugural address strikes a very different tone and is much shorter. Here is an excerpt that I found fascinating.
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it ~ all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war ~ seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.”
Friends, let’s refrain from name-calling, vain talk, and time-wasting banter regarding our national ills and leaders and appeal to the Almighty to lead us to repentance, show us righteousness, and seek His justice. The final words of Lincoln’s 2nd address ought to encourage us.
“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”