Duncan Newcomer on: What can Lincoln teach us about bridging the chasms in American culture?

By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Author of 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln: Quiet Fire

This is the book that participants in the 2023 Braver Angels conference will see displayed at the bookstore, this week. Click on this cover image to visit the book’s Amazon page.

My heart is with the Braver Angels convention in Gettysburg this week. Over 600 people in this growing movement are meeting to extend their many programs to de-polarize American politics and practice.

They chose Gettysburg, because—as Lincoln’s Address explains—the Union victory there was the re-birth place of America. Much of the success of the Braver Angel movement comes from its Lincoln inspiration. The group originally was named Better Angels after the words from Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. Because another group already had claimed that name, they changed to Braver Angels.

Gettysburg speaks volumes as to how this is a home base for both teams, the red team and the blue team, and the convention is equally represented.

I have encouraged Braver Angels since their inception. Among my connections, beyond Lincoln, I was a Marriage and Family Therapist for many years trained in the very same perspectives and techniques used by Braver Angels. One of the Braver Angels co-founders is Bill Doherty, who created the Braver Angels approach to workshops. Bill is a Professor and Director of the Minnesota Couples on the Brink Project in the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. Just as I have throughout my life, Bill combines a background in family therapy and community engagement.

If you would like to learn more about Braver Angels, check out:

Looking to Lincoln may inspire us to compassionately look toward our neighbors

Here is what I’m doing to help in this movement toward compassionate reconnection with our neighbors.

While I was not able to attend the conference, this year, my contributions to the gathering include making sure that my 30-day book on Lincoln’s wisdom is present for conference participants in the bookstore. I also sent out an invitation to writers I’ve worked with over the years to send stories for this special issue of ReadTheSpirit magazine that coincides with the conference schedule.

The magazine’s Editor David Crumm suggested that we start this collection of columns with two of my own columns about Lincoln to set the stage for this array of reflections.

What were Lincoln’s hopes? In the first of those columns, which originally was broadcast over public radio in Maine, I invite listeners and readers to look at the courage and hope Lincoln brought to his First Inaugural, including the appeal to all Americans: “If I can have the same generous cooperation of the people of this nation, I think the flag of our country may yet be kept flaunting gloriously.”

What were Lincoln’s core values? In the second of those columns, we explore Lincoln’s core values, which mirror almost universally held values that Americans continue to share. In this column, you will find touchstones for bridging gaps you may find in your own community.

Then, other writers have contributed the following reflections on the many ways Lincoln’s legacy can help us become “better angels,” today:

Journalist and author Bill Tammeus writes about how Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address still calls us to reach out to one another.

Journalist and author Martin Davis asks: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

Author and leadership coach Larry Buxton writes about: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

Columnist and editor Judith Pratt recalls: Hearing our Civil War stories shared generation to generation.

Attorney and community activist Mark Jacobs writes about: How Lincoln’s astonishing resilience and perseverance inspires me today

Duncan Newcomer’s ‘Haikus for Sonnets’ capture the wonderment of love for our companions

In Memoriam: Sonnets

Sonnets was a purebred Abyssian. She came under the care of the Rev. Dr. Duncan Newcomer as he entered major life transitions from Washington, D.C. in the year 2008. She was from a breeder in Long Island and for the great sum, to him, of $1,000, as a marker of the important transitions, was delivered, with her papers, to Rev. Newcomer in Cape May, New Jersey, in the fall of ’08. She was his companion from then on for the many transitions they both underwent, and came to her end with an untreatable illness in Maine, in September of 2021. Abyssians are famous for extending their right paw upon greeting or awakening and that was what won Newcomer’s heart at a cat show years before. She was a poem to him and so named after the form so perfectly presented by Shakespeare and Browning.

Haikus for Sonnets

By DUNCAN NEWCOMER

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Are you ready, ready

to go up the stairs, eat a treat,

make my life?

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When they see your cat face

they stop doing what they were.

They don’t know why.

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As if roaring you yawn,

a tiger awakes, teeth and claws,

then back to sleep.

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Moving square of sun

on floor, then higher

on chair, closer for you.

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It’s your war dance

chasing this feather on a string,

we take off kite-like.

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Of course I talked to you,

but like Tao,

silence was knowing.

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I had all the language.

You had not a word. You

are how we are together now.

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It was the

cool drop on your nose,

reassuring.

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Everything was OK

I had my cat

at least.

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If I had fur like you

but inside,

lick my heart?

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You, Abyssinian cat, round half circle on bed,

me, tall standing man, white hair,

breeze breaks curtains, your left paw stretching.

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Of course the sunlight

shown through your ears,

we could all hear it.

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There with your E.T. ears

I would always come back

to you, there with your E.T. ears.

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Yes, I would at times hold

your paw as we slept.

Not a third thing, just us.

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Can you still jump to

There?

Back and forth you tremble.

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They say it is best

To put the cat down.

This far? I say.

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Your nostrils like

pin holes, but

they put the last needle in your leg.

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My head bowed on yours

our two griefs one

lost each other, but you lost you.

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Head to head

I breathe full of mourn

no air left inside.

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These minutes of joy

did they run out

like the ticking clock?

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Shall I bring you

my emptiness

now, or later?

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Framed glass door

your place of view

empty now, seeing nothing.

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Twelve years never gone.

Two days gone now.

This just doesn’t add up.

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Skunk smell outside

acrid air everywhere,

I keep breathing grief.

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I’ve never caught a fish

with my hands,

nor this grief.

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Leave box of tissues

Anywhere now,

No table-jumping.

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Gripping grief

even little paws

scimitar claws.

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I’ve had a few

of your white whiskers

retrieved on my wood lamp base.

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I look over assured

your absence

present.

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The dark side of moon

still full

wanes when?

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In bed middle

no cat circle

nothing to curve around.

..

In dozens of Chinese verbs

overtones of grieving,

like Shakespeare, Sonnets.

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So a sonnet for Sonnets.

You, twelve years long.

Where is the couplet?

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I experience you in these words

like the room

you just left.

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Right now under the bedside lamp

still room made

on bed for you.

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So it is the next room

where I will see you again,

the next room.

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Last prayer

at end of day,

you raised my spirit.

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No, I won’t grieve

forever,

I won’t live that long.

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There’s a place for us,

it isn’t here,

yet.

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Stepping slowly

to heaven

did we leave anything behind?

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Exist in these words

Cat Tao Cat Tao Cat Tao?

Lick my hand.

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire—Lincoln on the sacred call to freedom and unity in his first inauguration

Lincoln’s first inauguration in 1861. He stands in the middle of he small crowd under the wooden canopy. Only a small patch of his white shirt can be discerned between the middle two pillars of the canopy. (Another view of the scene is below.)

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a reflection on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome.

Here’s Lincoln quote for you: “I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

Another view of the same moment. Cranes are visible on the roof, continuing the construction of the Thomas Walter-designed dome, which was not finished until 1866.

As President–Elect, Lincoln is on his way to D.C. to be inaugurated and is speaking early on the morning of February 22, 1861, on George Washington’s Birthday, in Old Independence Hall, Philadelphia, where he is to raise the flag.

To Lincoln this is a sacred event, at a sacred place. Philadelphia was our first capital, Independence Hall our first Capitol building.

His new guard, Alan Pinkerton, had told him he definitely could be killed that morning. They had tracked down multiple assassination plots. Yet Lincoln insisted that he be at Independence Hall on that morning, to raise that flag, to celebrate his boyhood hero, George Washington, and to do all in this first American capitol building.

It was there that he interrupted his prepared speech to say, “I would rather be assassinated on the spot than surrender it.”

“It” is the flag, the ritual event and place, and most, the country dedicated to the world-wide principle of liberty for all. To be there was more than rational. His emotions, the meaning of his words, the potential sacrifice, all add up to the theme of this program: the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln.

This was his courage to be faithful to something he knew to be sacred, the people there felt to be sacred, the political liberty that was a hope, as he said, “to the world, for all future time.” This is eternal for him.

What did the building and the flag have to do with it?

Lincoln’s speech begins, “I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here, in this place where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live.”

He makes it personal.  “I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

This is the spiritual life of Lincoln.

So he presents himself this proposition: If this country can be saved on the principle of liberty, then he says he will be “one of the happiest men in the world.” If it cannot be saved through the principle of liberty embodied in the Declaration of Independence, then, he says “it will be truly awful.”

And that is when, after suddenly stopping and bowing his head, he adds “I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

He would rather lose his life than lose a country that lost its liberty and what that liberty means to the people of the world for all future time.

Later that day, Lincoln, at the State Capital in Harrisburg, speaks with light humility to the General Assembly about his role in that somber early morning event in Philadelphia. He says that he was allowed the privilege of standing in Old Independence Hall. He says, “our friends had provided a magnificent flag of our country.” And that he had been given the “honor of raising it to the head of its staff…and that he was pleased that it went to its place (there) by the strength of my own feeble arm.”

Now we know from his axe-holding demonstrations that his arms were anything but feeble. But he is humble about this ritual, this place, the flag.

What is it about flags?

You know as kids we play capture the flag. Obviously it isn’t the flag we want but what it means to be able to capture it. I knew a woman in Belfast whose father had a piece of his father’s American flag. Having been captured in battle on the first day at Gettysburg his unit had torn up their flag and each hid their piece of it so that the Confederates couldn’t get it. They promised to reunite the flag if they lived.

America planted the first flag on the moon. At military funerals a spotless new American flag is draped over the casket and then folded into a tight triangle and given to the family. Flags are signs by which we symbolize sacred values. For Lincoln he hoped it would represent the value of liberty for the people of the world.

A theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr writes this using the images of the flag: “The Puritans, Pilgrims, Quakers, with their associates, were first of all loyalists. They were loyal…(to what they considered)…to use (G.K.) Chesterton’s phrase, the ‘flag of the world’; they were convinced that this flag represented power and law as well as benevolence in which men could trust when they had lost confidence in their own good will and in that of their…” church and state. They were protesters and dissenters only because they desired to be loyal to the government of God” he writes, “and that was their positive unifying allegiance, despite their many quarrels.”

Lincoln concluded his remarks at the Pennsylvania capital praising the cooperation of the people who arranged the flag raising event, of which he said he was their humble instrument:

“And if I can have the same generous cooperation of the people of this nation, I think the flag of our country may yet be kept flaunting gloriously.”

That was his invitation then, and can be to us now, so that like Lincoln, we can be lighted down in honor to the latest generation.

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Care to Read More in our Fourth of July 2023 series on Lincoln?

Whatever you choose to read next, you will find the following links to the other 2023 columns at the bottom of each page:

Lincoln scholar Duncan Newcomer’s introduction to this series includes a salute to Braver Angels, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to de-polarizing American politics that is gathering from across the country for a major conference at Gettysburg this week.

Duncan also writes about: What were Lincoln’s hopes for our nation?

And, he explores: What were Lincoln’s core values?

Then, journalist and author Bill Tammeus writes about how Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address still calls us to reach out to one another.

Journalist and author Martin Davis asks: Are our battle-scarred American roads capable of carrying us toward unity?

Author and leadership coach Larry Buxton writes about: Growing up and growing wise with Abraham Lincoln

Columnist and editor Judith Pratt recalls: Hearing our Civil War stories shared generation to generation.

Attorney and community activist Mark Jacobs writes about: How Lincoln’s astonishing resilience and perseverance inspires me today

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Want the book?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire—’A Christmas Carol’ with Abraham Lincoln

This entry is part 33 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

Charles Dickens

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This week we have an audio treat for you! All of Duncan Newcomer’s ReadTheSpirit columns—and the chapters of his book 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln: Quite Fireare based on episodes in a long-running radio series broadcast from Maine’s public radio station WERU. The stories always vary somewhat from text to radio broadcast. If you would like to hear Duncan’s recent 6-minute broadcast version of this column—please click here to listen via WERU’s online streaming service.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a reflection on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome.

Here’s Lincoln quote for you: “Bah, Humbug!”

Charles Dickens’ 1842 tour. (Click the image to enlarge it.)

Right! Lincoln never said that. It is hard to imagine that he ever would ever have said this. Lincoln is the least “Bah, Humbug!” person you can imagine.

However, looking at the spiritual life of Lincoln, we can see that the pattern of redemption found in Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol would have been familiar to Lincoln. Dickens’ most enduring story was published in 1843, the year after the author toured America in 1842 to give public readings of his works. There’s little evidence that Lincoln read much of Dickens and we know the two men never met. However, we do know that Dickens came to admire Lincoln and was curious about him when he launched his second American tour in 1867. During that tour, Dickens wrote a long letter home saying that he had enjoyed a dinner with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, one of Lincoln’s closest advisors, during which Stanton described Lincoln’s final days in great, emotional detail.

While Lincoln and Dickens never met and there’s no record of Lincoln writing or talking about A Christmas Carol—Lincoln clearly would have known about this very popular story. More importantly, he would have recognized the arc of the story from his frontier camp-meeting revival days. Lincoln was very familiar with tales of poor sinners confronting their sins and reaching a heart-conversion.

At the end of the Dickens’ story, Scrooge sees the impact of his own miserliness. He fears that he may have missed any chance for redemption. Then, he awakens and opens his heart to his nephew’s family, his employee Bob Cratchit and Bob’s son Tiny Tim. We know Lincoln was the kind of person who would have smiled fondly and shed a tear at the character of Tiny Tim.

Charles Dickens’ 1867-68 tour. (Click the image to enlarge it.)

Dickens, of course, knew something of America’s Great Awakening revivalism. Among other things, he knew that classic American sermon by Jonathan Edwards about the sinner-spider dangling over the fire of hell suspended only by the hand of the angry but gracious God. We see that same pattern in the inner narrative of Ebenezer Scrooge’s awakening heart.

Scrooge is not so much greedy as he is miserly. He does not want to spend for anything, certainly not the poor. He is a hoarder. He growls that the needy are not his responsibility. “Is there not a safety-net!?!”

In his ghost-escorted tour, Scrooge begins by seeing himself when he was a lonely boy. He feels sympathy for himself and so do we, as readers of the tale. But he seems to feel that having things and keeping things will cure his wounded inner boy. We see him betray himself and his fiancée in his thirst for gold. Miserly greed becomes the habit of his heart and turns him into the heartless man who gives his assistant Bob Cratchit only a candle to keep warm during his long, cold, winter days at work.

Then, we are moved by the potential death of the ill Tiny Tim, the lame boy who finds joy in going to church on Christmas Eve so that people can see who it was that Jesus came to love. We are carried along to the good-hearted nephew’s family dinner.

But not Scrooge. He sees instead the greed of the very poor who he believes are willing to rob him. His spectral tour guide takes him to a future Christmas in which he has died and his servant steals his bed sheets and bed curtains from around him to sell for a bit of cash. He is remembered, in this vision, only as a cruel man resented by everyone.

Fear of his death, and of there being no chance left to change, seeps into Scrooge’s heart. He also is taken by the Ghost of Christmas Present to see the sufferings of the whole wide world on Christmas Eve. This begins to move Scrooge, to awaken his spirit.

The story is a morally inspired dream in which Scrooge finally does get the message, then awakens to celebrate his unearned reprieve.

Re-envisioning the tale:
A Christmas Carol with Abraham Lincoln

Now, Lincoln loved the theater of his own mind and said he’d rather read a Shakespeare play than see it on stage. So in the theater of our minds let us visit here another fantasy, a re-envisioning, A Christmas Carol with Abraham Lincoln:

Mr. Lincoln approached the White House door, but it opened slowly without his touching the latch. There, as he entered, was the ghost of old Thomas Jefferson with an urgent look on his face. He was draped in chains.

Jefferson moaned like Jacob Marley: “President Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, you know I had hold of a wolf by its ears, slavery! Now I have these chains myself. But what of the country, Lincoln? What of the country?! Slavery was something that the next generations would have to solve. I could not, embedded in my way of life. We couldn’t as nation. We needed foreign trade for economic growth, and to support our rural way of life. So for cotton we needed slaves, for then, for a while.

Jefferson continued: “But you know, as did I, this was a terrible contradiction of the very Declaration of Independence that I had written. All men are created equal, I proclaimed. It was self-evident, and it was sacred. We all knew that: Franklin, Adams, and others. But we knew we were building our house on sand, not rock. What has become of that wolf, Lincoln? What has become of the slaves? What is to become of my own chains, the country’s chains? You must do something as President. You must. If not you too will be haunted by these chains, as am I. A ghost will come to you Abraham, three times, beware!”

And so came the Ghost of America Past. What did they see? What did Mr. Lincoln see?

He saw slaves like fish on a trout line. He saw violent men cross state borders to capture runaway slaves. He saw a moral evil growing in new states. He saw blacks being defined by the Supreme Count as non existent. He saw slaves being counted for the census at 3/5th of a person. He saw slave power becoming an oligarchy, and white middle class and poor families pushed to the margins. He saw Slave Empires ready to move south into Mexico and Central America. He saw the hope of self-government dying because of the state power needed to enforce humans as property.

Then came the question: “And, what about now, Mr. Lincoln?”

That’s when the Ghost of America Present took Lincoln around the nation that night, December 24, 1864. What did they see? They saw more hate, not less. They saw war. They saw General Sherman invade the South and burn a path across it. They saw Black soldiers from the Union being shot as prisoners not as military men. And they saw more and more hatred: Southern whites hating the federal government; Northern whites hating to fight for Black freedom rather than for just the Union.

They saw Lincoln as a dictator. “King Abraham.” They saw hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly young men as soldiers north and south.

Lincoln recalled Jefferson’s moaning: “Lincoln, Lincoln. I have left you a legacy and an albatross. What will you do? What can you do? What can Americans do?”

Then the Ghost of America Yet To Come took Lincoln’s arm.

What did they see? What did they hear?

A Christmas Carol?

Did they hear mystic chords of memory? A chorus stretching from every patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone, a swelling chorus of Union, touching our better angels?

Could there be a rebirth without malice, a just and lasting peace within America, with the other nations?

“Lincoln,” said Thomas Jefferson, “you must prevail. America must become America. It cannot be left to me and my chains.”

From a story such as this a vision could light us, as it did Lincoln, down in honor, even to the latest generation.

This is Duncan Newcomer and this has been Quiet Fire, the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire—’The Last Best Hope of Earth’

This entry is part 32 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

THIS BRIEF VIDEO was made to introduce a 2013 Baltimore performance of Paula Vogel’s ‘A Civil War Christmas,’ a play that’s referenced in this column. The setting: It’s a bitterly cold Christmas Eve during the war and, from the White House to battlefields, friends and foes alike find their lives strangely and poetically intertwined. The New York Times calls this perennial classic a “beautifully stitched tapestry of American lives.” Due to the pandemic, this may be the first year in more than a decade that Vogel’s play will not be not presented somewhere across the U.S. In this column, Lincoln scholar Duncan Newcomer invokes Lincoln’s and Vogel’s wisdom about hope in the midst of chaos.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a reflection on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome.

Here’s a Lincoln quote for you: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

“The last best hope of earth.” Once again, Lincoln coined a phrase that has cascaded across more than a century into countless contexts and meanings—a phrase he built around that timeless virtue: hope.

Hope. A candle in the dark.

Hope is one of the three theological virtues in Christianity. It’s the theme of the first candle lit in the Christian ritual of lighting weekly candles during Advent, the four weeks that prepare us for Christmas. Lincoln was delivering these words 24 days before Christmas of 1862.

Here’s the context. He already had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in September of that year. He had not yet delivered his full summation of these themes at Gettysburg, an address that would come in November 1863. These words about “last best hope” appeared in the closing lines of Lincoln’s December 1, 1862, message to Congress. Today, we would call it his State of the Union. The full closing paragraph was:

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless. 

In his line about “hope,” Lincoln was summoning a global vision—the hope of the world for free government, for self government, for equality. A hope that belongs to the whole earth—that was Lincoln’s scope. Lincoln knew this was a rare and precious moment. He told Congress that history had given them an opportunity—a fiery trial—to make that hope come true.

A fiery trial. An opportunity to embody hope. So, too, as 2020 heads toward 2021 in this nation.

We see again how much the world needs the hope of equality and freedom—perhaps even the last best hope of earth.

The Christmas coming in 1862 was particularly bleak for Abe and Mary. Their boy Willie had died in February of that year. They were grieving. Two of the three most recent major Civil War battles had gone very badly for the Union. Abe and Mary would spend Christmas that year visiting the wounded soldiers in various hospitals in Washington. The many sick and the many, many dying were their concern.

He was the President, offering the hope of only his presence to the grieving and the dying.

Helping us to envision Lincoln and Christmas during the Civil War is a moving musical play, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel: A Civil War Christmas. Until the pandemic shut down most theaters, the play was presented somewhere across the country almost every year since Vogel wrote it more than a decade ago.

What does the play show? It shows Black people. It shows white people. It shows Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln’s Black American dress maker, future stalwart companion and author. The play shows us far more than just Abe and Mary. In fact, there are 61 different characters in this play, rich and poor, safe and in danger, all played by 16 actors. It is an American Musical. Folksongs, hymns, Carols, marches and spirituals bring the lost and the isolated into that one open-hearted place of hope we call Christmas in America.

The spirit of community is at stake in this play. We see the best of the human spirit arise in hope and forgiveness for so many different people—just as it can today.

One of outstanding lines from the play is this: “The hope of peace is sweeter than peace itself.”

And, for Christians, peace is the theme of the second week’s Advent Candle.

The play echoes Lincoln’s message. It is nothing less than the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every hospital and grave, every flooded hurricane-hit city to every burned-down town and home, from every Black life that didn’t seem to matter, to every living and opened heart in this broad land, yet swelling the chorus of the union, when again, all are touched, as surely they will be this Christmas, by the better angels of their nature.

Those are the candle flames that can light us, as they did Abraham Lincoln, down in honor, to the latest generation.

This is Duncan Newcomer and this has been Quiet Fire, the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Prayer from Abraham Lincoln for Thanksgiving

LINCOLN scholar Duncan Newcomer has contributed many of the fascinating materials indexed in our Abraham Lincoln Resource Page. Drawing on Lincoln’s own words, from various texts, Newcomer has assembled this special prayer, perfect for use at Thanksgiving—the national holiday our 16th president established. Of course, you are free to widely share this prayer. Click the blue-“f” Facebook button, or the envelope-shaped email icon, or print this page and pass it around.

Inside the Lincoln Memorial Washington DCPrayer from Lincoln
at Thanksgiving

So, we must think anew,
And act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves.
We are not enemies,
But friends.
We must not be enemies.
We cannot separate.
There is no line, straight or crooked,
Upon which to divide.
We cannot escape history.
No personal significance, or insignificance,
Can spare one or another of us.

The mystic chords of memory
Will yet swell the chorus of union
To every living heart
And hearthstone,
And again touch
The better angels of our nature.

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Care to Enjoy More Lincoln Right Now?

GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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Duncan Newcomer’s Abraham Lincoln Quiet Fire—Marking the anniversary of those 272 words at Gettysburg

This entry is part 31 of 33 in the series Duncan Newcomer's Quiet Fire

WHAT A POWERFUL PHOTO! This is one of only two confirmed images of Lincoln on the day he delivered his Gettysburg Address in 1863. The power of the photo certainly doesn’t lie in its visual clarity of Lincoln himself—it lies in the visual truth of the overwhelming forces surrounding Lincoln at this time. This photo was taken just as Lincoln was arriving, hours before he would deliver his address. He appears here without his trademark stovepipe hat, bareheaded and looking downward, right in the middle of this vast sea of people who are almost submerging him in the press of bodies.

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By DUNCAN NEWCOMER
Host of the ‘Quiet Fire’ series

This is Quiet Fire, a reflection on the spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln and its relevance to us today. Welcome.

Closeup of Lincoln from the photo above.

Here’s a Lincoln quote for you: “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.”

These are lines from Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg, the battlefield that was the high-water mark of the Confederate rebellion, and the beginning of the ebb-tide of civil war. It was a victory, not so much by the Union—but in Lincoln’s mind, for the Union.

This Thursday, November 19, 2020, is the 157th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.

On that day it was unusually warm. The trees were newly bare of leaves; fall was in the air in Pennsylvania. It had been rainy and grey. Lincoln had a black band on the tall hat he brought with him for the address, a memorial for his favorite son Willie. Lincoln carried his own real grief over a lost son with him to that graveyard dedication of a nation’s grief over their lost ones.

Grief was in the air. The trees were stark, not only because of the changing season, but from canon fire that had shot off branch after branch in the huge artillery barrage that had opened this turning point battle in a war. The war had cost well over 600,000 lives. That would translate, as a per cent of the U.S. population, to more than 6 million now. Everyone was being touched by suffering and death.

The message that Lincoln brought with him was that this suffering and these deaths were not an end but a beginning—a truly spiritual message: Out of suffering and death we find and see new life. He said: What you see—the cemetery—tells you there is something beyond the grave yard. That is spiritual talk.

When we re-read his 272 words, we find subliminal poetry—and it is all about birth: conceived, brought forth, birth and rebirth. All the major verbs and nouns reflect this generative feminine motif. To him the killing field can most deeply be seen and felt as a birthing place, not to glorify war and death, but to see glory and new life in the honor and dedication to a high ideal sacrificed for on that ground. That ideal was, in Lincoln’s mind, and then in so many hearers’ minds ever since, the idea of freedom and its soul-mate, equality.

Lincoln goes back to the birth certificate of the country. 1776 and the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal. That was what was stamped on the certificate. That is the freedom that self-government is for. It’s not for just ourselves, it’s for everybody. The country, too, needs liberty to be itself.

The date on the birth certificate of America was important to Lincoln, and it had yet to be certified. Some said it could have been 1787 when the Constitution was written and adopted. Lincoln was a lawyer. He was guided by the Constitution. But that, to him, was the text book, the hand book, not the birth record. The law was important. But the inspiration for the law—freedom and equality—was more important.

Nor did he go back, we can conjecture—to 1619 and the first English settlers in Jamestown and the first slaves brought to these shores, racially identified slaves. Lincoln hated slavery. He had seen bound slaves, tied like fish on a line—and had seen the corruption that comes when you make people into property. But that offense, the offense from 1619, was not his message. He was to say soon enough in his Second Inaugural Address, that that offense, which was so rank even to God, had been equally shared by both North and South. Slavery was American, not Southern, and it had been paid for by our blood.

We did not have to re-punish the wrong doer. Lincoln was not a religious fan of the idea of Original Sin. We were not born bad. And it was, as Jesus had said, not ours to judge others. We did not have to argue everyone into accepting their guilt and to take our version of punishment—although there were radicals within his party that thought the righteous North should punish those who cared had so much about their property, the slaves, as to destroy the country. That was not our task. Lincoln really did believe in God by this point in his life, and he really did say “that this nation, under God….shall have a new birth of freedom.”

To this day, Lincoln’s words are still lighting people down in honor, around the world, not just Americans, but as people wanting to be reborn, free and equal, down to the latest generation. In other words, forever.
This is Duncan Newcomer, and this has been Quiet Fire. The spiritual life of Abraham Lincoln.

 

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GET A COPY of Duncan’s 30 Days with Abraham Lincoln—Quiet Fire.

Each of the 30 stories in this book includes a link to listen to the original radio broadcasts. The book is available from Amazon in hardcover, paperback and Kindle versions. ALSO, you can order hardcover and paperback from Barnes & Noble. In addition, our own publishing house offers these bookstore links to order hardcovers as well as paperbacks directly from our supplier.

 

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