Words written by Barack Obama when he was re-elected in 2012 in are worth remembering today, as our nation appears to be teetering on the brink of the abyss.
In the interest of searchability, and because cursive handwriting—particularly among the left-handed like myself and the 44th president—can be difficult to decipher sometimes, here’s a transcription of the manuscript below:
“In the evening, when Michelle and the girls have gone to bed, I sometimes walk down the hall to a room Abraham Lincoln used as his office. It contains an original copy of the Gettysburg Address, written in Lincoln’s own hand.
I linger on these few words that have helped define our American experiment: ‘a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’
Through the lines of weariness etched in his face, we know Lincoln grasped, perhaps more than anyone, the burdens required to give those words meaning. He knew that even a self evident truth was not self executing; that blood drawn by the lash was an affront to our ideals; that blood drawn by the sword was in painful service to those same ideals.
He understood as well that our humble efforts, our individual ambitions, are ultimately not what matter; rather, it is through the accumulated toil and sacrifice of ordinary men and women—those like the soldiers who consecrated that battlefield—that this country is built, and freedom preserved. This quintesentially self made man, fierce in his belief in honest work and the divine spirit at the heart of America, believed that it falls to each generation, collectively, to share in that toil and sacrifice.
Through cold war and world war, through industrial revolutions and technological transformations, through movements for civil rights and women’s rights workers rights and gay rights, we have. At times, social and economic change have strained our union. But Lincoln’s words give us confidence that whatever trials await us, this nation and the freedoms we cherish can, and shall, prevail.”
Happy president’s day to all, from one great president through another and on to all of us. May these words inspire us to face the troubled days that lie before us. The final sentence, in particular, is something to hold onto.