On this date in 1938 Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert E. Sherwood opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre. It was directed by Elmer Rice and starred Raymond Massey as Lincoln. Sherwood won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his work, one that audiences were longing for during the Great Depression as they longed, in turn, to believe that Americas destiny as a democracy had not run its course just as Lincoln in his day faced those same doubts and we in ours once more do. The irony is that the forces that Lincoln fought against are now the forces we must fight against in his Republican party, one that he would no longer recognize since the present day GOP would think of him as a RINO (Republican In Name Only). Lincoln fought against the Confederate states use of nullification as a ploy to propagate their belief in states rights and the continuation of slavery which was the radical right-wing conservatives literal battle cry of the 19th Century just as a hatred of our countrys first twice-elected African American president is the battle cry of the right-wing radicals today, a racial component that cannot be denied even though more than a century separates these neo-Confederates from their 19th Century compatriots. At the end of Abe Lincoln in Illinois, the newly elected president stands on the back of a train about to head to Washington to take up the mantle - and burden - of his leadership, a mantel and burden that also included the virulent hatred he would have to endure from the radical right-wing white southern conservatives of his day. In the play these are his last words to his neighbors and his fellow citizens: I am called upon to assume the Presidency at a time when eleven of our sovereign states have announced their intention to secede from the Union, and threats of war increase in fierceness from day to day. It is a grave duty which I now face. In preparing for it, I have tried to inquire what great principle or idea it is which has kept this Union so long together. And I believe that it was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty to the people of this country and hope to all the world. This sentiment was the fulfillment of an ancient dream, which men have held through all time, a dream that one day they might shake off their chains and find freedom in the brotherhood of life. We gained democracy, and there is now doubt whether it is fit to survive. Perhaps we have come to the dreadful day of awakening, and the dream is ended. If so, I am afraid it must be ended forever. I cannot believe that ever again will men have the opportunity we have had. Perhaps we should admit that, and concede that our ideals of liberty and equality are decadent and doomed. I have heard of an eastern monarch who once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence which would be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, And this too shall pass away. That is a comforting thought in times of affliction -- And this too shall pass away. And yet let us believe that it is not true! Let us live to prove that we can cultivate the natural world that is about us, and the intellectual and moral world that is within us, so that we may secure an individual, social and political prosperity, whose course shall be forward, and which, while this earth endures, shall not pass away. I commend you to the care of the Almighty, as I hope that in your prayers you will remember me. Let us, indeed, remember this earlier president who too was hated so by the same types of right-wing radicals who hate our president today. And let us remember why each of these presidents stirred up and stir up such hatred even as we remember Lincolns stirring words and his memory stirs the enlightened rest of us to do better and be better.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 15:49:15 +0000
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