INDY'S CORNER: February 16, 2009

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Abraham Lincoln was uncontestedly the most divisive President the United States has known, his mere election causing the immediate secession of seven states, the American Civil War prosecuted entirely under his watch.

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While attending a play, Lincoln was coldly shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth, a former Confederate spy enraged over the President's desire to extend voting rights to freed slaves.  After the murder, Booth jumped to the stage and shouted, "Sic Semper Tyrannis" - Thus Always to Tyrants, to the stunned audience, before hastily fleeing the theater.

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Simultaneously, a co-conspirator, Lewis Powell, attempted to execute Secretary of State William Seward, by stabbing him at his residence.  A third plot by George Atzerodt to murder Vice President Andrew Johnson failed to materialize.

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Lincoln's untimely death plunged the nation into deep mourning, drove his widow Mary Todd Lincoln to insanity, and left an unerasable black mark on the story of America.

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On the occasion of the two-hundredth anniversary of  Lincoln's birth, may those of us who engage in political polarization, purely for entertainment, take a moment to ponder the great responsibility that the right of free speech carries with it.

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O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

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O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up - for you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! Dear Father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

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My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

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- Walt Whitman, 1865

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