Remembering Father Abraham on the 150th Anniversary of His Martyrdom

April Leadership Reflection:

The Unfinished Business of Great Leaders

        Amid the hustle and bustle of everyday life in the 21^st century, we often expect our leaders to get things done NOW, finish EVERYTHING off, and leave NOTHING behind for anyone else to do. Short-term tasks are certainly time-sensitive and need to be completed ASAP; most of our professional work is like that, to be sure. But great leaders of the past challenged their successors and followers to complete the long-term work that they had begun. Why? It wasn’t because great leaders are lazy or delegate too much; it’s because some tasks are too big for any one person to finish within a single human lifespan.

        A sterling example of this type of long-term goal-setting, which leaves behind unfinished business for later generations to complete, can be found in the speeches and writings of Abraham Lincoln. This month, people around the world are commemorating the 150^th anniversary of his death on April 15, 1865. As we remember Lincoln’s long list of accomplishments, let us also resolve to continue working toward the long-term goals that he challenged the American people to achieve – the foremost among them being the continuous growth of liberty, equality, justice, and peace for all people everywhere, and for all time to come.

Excerpts from Selected Speeches by Abraham Lincoln

During His Presidency (1861-1865)

Annual Message to Congress:

December 3, 1861 (Concluding Paragraph)

        The struggle of today, is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also. With a reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great task which events have devolved upon us.

The Gettysburg Address:

November 19, 1863 (Complete Text)

        Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

        Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

        But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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.

Speech to the 166th Ohio Regiment:

August 22, 1864 (Complete Text)

        I suppose you are going home to see your families and friends. For the service you have done in this great struggle in which we are engaged I present you sincere thanks for myself and the country. I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say anything to soldiers, to impress upon them in a few brief remarks the importance of success in this contest. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children’s children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright – not only for one, but for two or three years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such an inestimable jewel.

Second Inaugural Address:

March 4, 1865 (Concluding Paragraph)

        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.

        In remembrance of President Lincoln (a Founding Father of the University of Illinois), I would like to encourage all our readers to take a few moments to read and reflect on the poem “Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight,” composed in 1914 (as a response to the outbreak of World War I) by Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931), a native of Springfield, Illinois. The text of the poem can be found online at http://www.bartleby.com/104/83.html, with a commentary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_Walks_at_Midnight.

“Lincoln” by Vachel Lindsay

Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,

That which is gendered in the wilderness

From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.

Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,

Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,

Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,

Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire —

Fire that freed the slave.