THE ELOQUENT PRESIDENT (What it meant to me.)

 ( This is not a book review. It is only statements of what the book meant to me.)

            The Significance of —— 

                        The Eloquent President 

                                    By: Ronald C. White Jr. 

                In my personal blog where this piece is destined I have designated a section where I intend to copy and enter words or writings which seem to have special value to me. I have given this section the title – WELL SAID. This book is a special study of our former president, Lincoln, using his words as a lens to observe him with. Very few of President Lincoln’s words would not qualify for my Well Said section.

            Now it is obvious that the terrible time through which Lincoln was called upon to journey and the terrible task he was asked to lead provided many opportunities for a knowledgeable person to offer words of explanation, words of pleading, words of scolding, words of encouragement and words of any other kind which are desperately needed by a leader in a desperate time. Our President did not fail us.

            So, for me the book was an adventure through a special time for our country combined with a special countryman. Mr. Lincoln’s words were used to gain him the presidency, to perform those duties all while reminding us of who we were, who we wanted to be and how to move between the two. At the end his words enabled the victorious and the defeated to reassemble. None of it all happened in the simplified way I have stated here but his words did move through the times as a guide-on- banner moves through the battlefield being a focal point during chaotic conditions.

            From another book it has been spelled out for me that our Revolutionary Army was the highest integrated army with blacks fighting with whites than any army we had thereafter up until Vietnam.  This is a remarkable fact. In this book though another more improbable fact was clearly pointed out by President Lincoln:” Both…. Pray to the same God ….. and each invokes His aid against the others.” This books author, passes on to us a quote from the author of – For Cause and Comrade: Why Men Fought in the Civil War – a further observation which is astonishing:” Civil War armies were, arguably, the most religious in American history.”

            How do we allow ourselves to do what we have when the knowledge of the clear right and wrong of it is so evident? Well, we did in a big way and evidence can still be found here in 2008 that we are still struggling.