Lincoln, the Man of the People

(The Lincoln Memorial by Daniel Chester
French, 1850-1931)

“I am naturally anti-slavery,” President Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1864. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel.”

from LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE

Up from the log cabin to the Capitol,
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve —
To send the keen ax to the root of wrong,
Clearing a free way for the feet of God,
The yes of conscience testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man.
He built the rail-pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow:
The grip that swung the ax in Illinois
Was on the pen that set a people free.

~ Edwin Markham (1852-1940), American poet