The Holy Grail of science is to understand the Higgs Boson, the God Particle, the Dark Matter which makes the Universe exist. Lincoln is the Higgs Boson of American History, the God Particle. If Americans could only understand Lincoln, we would be able to understand everything.
LINCOLN AS THE HIGGS BOSON-
Lincoln was a dark, dark, dark man, of dark moods, great depressions, black dreams. Lincoln was as dark as King Saul, dark as any Shakespearean Hamlet or Lear, dark as Churchill.
In fact Lincoln and Churchill had much in common. They both were hated by their fathers. Lincoln was saved by the love of his step-mother; Churchill by the love of his nanny.
They were both given to great bouts of depression; Churchill called his depression-his black dog.
They were both two dark men who brought light where no one else could. One defeated a masterful race of slave holders; the other defeated the Nazis. It is as if God made depressives the vessels of choice for saving the world. Ironic.
Lincoln was the most eccentric, most weird, nuttiest man to ever sit in the White House, and that includes that other flawed Shakespearean genius, Richard Nixon.
In the brilliant chronicle, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS, the author Sherwood includes a telling scene. A young Abe Lincoln is telling his friend about a dream he had(Lincoln had a lot of dreams). In it, Lincoln is taking a barge down the Mississippi to New Orleans; there a mob chases him.
“What happens next Abe?” The friend asks.
Young Abe answers: “They killed me.”
Lincoln always knew he was not going to die; Lincoln always knew he was going to be killed, martyred…as Tolstoy remarked, Christ in Miniature.
Lincoln was so overcome by the death of Willie, that TWICE, he went to Willie’s grave and exhumed Willie’s body to look at his dead son’s face. TWICE.
Shortly before his actual death, Lincoln told his Cabinet of a dream he had had; "About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers, 'The President,' was his answer; 'he was killed by an assassin.' Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since."
Lincoln had a vivid and accurate premonition of his own murder.
Gore Vidal, one of the great atheists of the 20th Century, commented, when he tackled Lincoln, that the 16th President was “DRENCHED WITH THE ALMIGHTY.”
Three of Mary Todd Lincoln sons died before her; Robert should have been the fourth. He fell onto railroad tracks at a rail station and was almost crushed to death by an oncoming train. He was pulled to safety by the actor Edwin Booth, the brother of his father’s assassin. How ironic.
Finally, the three greatest writers of English soaring prose are Shakespeare, Churchill and Lincoln. All three could write prose worthy of being included in the Bible. The three greatest speeches ever written in English are the BAND OF BROTHERS speech in HENRY V by Shakespeare; the THEIR FINEST HOUR speech by Churchill and the Second Inaugural Address by Lincoln.
“The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
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.”.
Lincoln's Final Judge-The Army of The Potomac
The final judgment on Lincoln was passed down by the men who died for the Republic under his Leadership, the men of the vaunted Army of the Potomac.
The Army of the Potomac was one of the great armies in history, rivaling the Army of the Anabasis, and the New Model Army of Cromwell. Under President Lincoln, it was forced to do battle against two military geniuses, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Army of the Potomac lost the following engagements: the First Battle of Bull Run, the Seven Days, the Second Battle of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.
It barely got a draw at Antietam, even though they knew, by fluke, Lee’s battle plans ahead of time.
It won a bloody victory at Gettysburg only because Jackson was not there, and Chamberlain was there. Does anyone think that Confederate troops under Jackson would have stopped for rest mere yards from cutting the Baltimore Turnpike and ending the war?
“It is hard for modern Americans to believe that Abraham Lincoln, one of history's most beloved Presidents, was nearly defeated in his reelection attempt in 1864. Yet by that summer, Lincoln himself feared he would lose. How could this happen? First, the country had not elected an incumbent President for a second term since Andrew Jackson in 1832 — nine Presidents in a row had served just one term. Also, his embrace of emancipation was still a problem for many Northern voters.
Despite Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg a year earlier, the Southern armies came back fighting with a vengeance. During three months in the summer of 1864, over 65,000 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing-in-action. In comparison, there had been 108,000 Union casualties in the first three years. General Ulysses S. Grant was being called The Butcher. At one time during the summer, Confederate soldiers under Jubal Early came within five miles of the White House.
The Army of the Potomac represented not merely the votes of 100,000 men, but also the votes of relatives and friends who relied on these men for news from the front. The soldiers were heroes to those they left behind…”
In the end, the battered blood sacrifices who comprised the Army of the Potomac voted, in the 1864 election, 3 to 1 for Lincoln .
Would Johnson have gotten 75% of the soldiers’ vote in Vietnam? Would George W. Bush have gotten 75% of the soldiers’ vote in Iraq? Did Obama get 75% percent of the soldiers’ vote in Afghanistan? Will Biden get 75% of the combat soldiers' vote?
Above all, the warriors who bled wanted Lincoln to finish the job of war, so he could manage the peace, with his Christ like intentions.
Lincoln is the greatest man ever produced by the Republic; the Higgs Boson of America, America's God Particle.
Tolstoy called Lincoln, CHRIST IN MINIATURE.
“A reporter for the New York World interviewed Leo Tolstoy for the Lincoln centennial in 1909;”
“Visiting Leo Tolstoi in Yasnaya with the intention of getting him to write an article on Lincoln, I unfortunately found him not well enough to yield to my request. However, he was willing to give me his opinion of the great American statesman, and this is what he told me:
“Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.” .
“Visiting Leo Tolstoi in Yasnaya with the intention of getting him to write an article on Lincoln, I unfortunately found him not well enough to yield to my request. However, he was willing to give me his opinion of the great American statesman, and this is what he told me:
“Of all the great national heroes and statesmen of history Lincoln is the only real giant. Alexander, Frederick the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Gladstone and even Washington stand in greatness of character, in depth of feeling and in a certain moral power far behind Lincoln. Lincoln was a man of whom a nation has a right to be proud; he was a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations. We are still too near to his greatness, and so can hardly appreciate his divine power; but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.” .
“If one would know the greatness of Lincoln one should listen to the stories which are told about him in other parts of the world. I have been in wild places, where one hears the name of America uttered with such mystery as if it were some heaven or hell. I have heard various tribes of barbarians discussing the New World, but I heard this only in connection with the name of Lincoln. Lincoln as the wonderful hero of America is known by the most primitive nations of Asia. This may be illustrated through the following incident:
“Once while travelling in the Caucasus I happened to be the guest of a Caucasian chief of the Circassians, who, living far away from civilized life in the mountains, had but a fragmentary and childish comprehension of the world and its history. The fingers of civilization had never reached him nor his tribe, and all life beyond his native valleys was a dark mystery. Being a Mussulman he was naturally opposed to all ideas of progress and education.
“I was received with the usual Oriental hospitality and after our meal was asked by my host to tell him something of my life. Yielding to his request I began to tell him of my profession, of the development of our industries and inventions and of the schools. He listened to everything with indifference, but when I began to tell about the great statesmen and the great generals of the world he seemed at once to become very much interested.
“‘Wait a moment,’ he interrupted, after I had talked a few minutes. ‘I want all my neighbors and my sons to listen to you. I will call them immediately.’
“He soon returned with a score of wild looking riders and asked me politely to continue. It was indeed a solemn moment when those sons of the wilderness sat around me on the floor and gazed at me as if hungering for knowledge. I spoke at first of our Czars and of their victories; then I spoke of the foreign rulers and of some of the greatest military leaders. My talk seemed to impress them deeply.
……..When I declared that I had finished my talk, my host, a gray-bearded, tall rider, rose, lifted his hand and said very gravely:
“‘But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock and as sweet as the fragrance of roses. The angels appeared to his mother and predicted that the son whom she would conceive would become the greatest the stars had ever seen. He was so great that he even forgave the crimes of his greatest enemies and shook brotherly hands with those who had plotted against his life. His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.’
“‘Tell us, please, and we will present you with the best horse of our stock,’ shouted the others.
“I looked at them and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend. I told them of Lincoln and his wisdom, of his home life and youth. They asked me ten questions to one which I was able to answer. They wanted to know all about his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength. But they were very astonished to hear that Lincoln made a sorry figure on a horse and that he lived such a simple life.
“‘Tell us why he was killed,’ one of them said.
“I had to tell everything. After all my knowledge of Lincoln was exhausted they seemed to be satisfied. …..
“The next morning when I left the chief a wonderful Arabian horse was brought me as a present for my marvelous story, and our farewell was very impressive.
“One of the riders agreed to accompany me to the town and get the promised picture(of Lincoln), ……. It was interesting to witness the gravity of his face and the trembling of his hands when he received my present. He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer; his eyes filled with tears. He was deeply touched and I asked him why he became so sad. After pondering my question for a few moments he replied:
“‘I am sad because I feel sorry that he had to die by the hand of a villain. Don’t you find, judging from his picture, that his eyes are full of tears and that his lips are sad with a secret sorrow?’
……. “Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. He had come through many hardships and much experience to the realization that the greatest human achievement is love. He was what Beethoven was in music, Dante in poetry, Raphael in painting, and Christ in the philosophy of life. He aspired to be divine— and he was.
“It is natural that before he reached his goal he had to walk the highway of mistakes. But we find him, nevertheless, in every tendency true to one main motive, and that was to benefit mankind. He was one who wanted to be great through his smallness. If he had failed to become President he would be, no doubt, just as great as he is now, but only God could appreciate it. The judgment of the world is usually wrong in the beginning, and it takes centuries to correct it. But in the case of Lincoln the world was right from the start. Sooner or later Lincoln would have been seen to be a great man, even though he had never been an American President. But it would have taken a great generation to place him where he belongs.
“Lincoln died prematurely by the hand of the assassin, and naturally we condemn the criminal from our viewpoint of justice. But the question is, was his death not predestined by a divine wisdom, and was it not better for the nation and for his greatness that he died just in that way and at that particular moment? We know so little about that divine law which we call fate that no one can answer. Christ had a presentiment of His death, and there are indications that also Lincoln had strange dreams and presentiments of something tragic. If that was really the fact, can we conceive that human will could have prevented the outcome of the universal or divine will? I doubt it. I doubt also that Lincoln could have done more to prove his greatness than he did. ….. Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country— bigger than all the Presidents together. Why? Because he loved his enemies as himself and because he was a universal individualist who wanted to see himself in the world— not the world in himself. He was great through his simplicity and was noble through his charity…”Leo Tolstoy, 1909."
Lincoln was a best selling author-"Abraham Lincoln wrote a best-selling book. Even big Lincoln biographies have missed this story. It started in 1858, when Lincoln had just lost his famous Senate race against Stephen Douglas. You’d think he would be feeling frustrated, feeling down. Instead he just got to work. He tried to find the most accurate transcripts of the debates he had had with Douglas on the trail. His contemporaries were thinking: Why do you care about this? Everyone has moved on. But he understood that in those debates, he had given his fullest and most eloquent answers about slavery and why it shouldn’t expand. He finally got the best transcripts, put them together really carefully and used them as the source text for the published book, which became a huge best seller. One store in Chicago put together a stack of copies that was seven feet tall, and by the end of the day the books were gone.
I think the fact that Lincoln saw that this book could be successful says a lot about how ambitious he was, and about him as a book lover. It came out in 1860, just early enough to help him in the Republican primary, and during the general election is when the book became a national sensation. It sold 50,000 copies, which was a big number, but if you adjust it — and it’s a rough adjustment — it’s the equivalent of half a million copies today. People would ask him what he thought about this issue, and he would send them to the book. He used it to stand in for himself and his ideas....NEW YORK TIMES."
Truly it can be said, Lincoln is the American Higgs Boson, America's God Particle.
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