I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
- Abraham Lincoln
Hmm... it's a pity, immense pity that they don't make men like Lincoln anymore. Every time I read about him, my little difficulties seem meaningless and brings tears to my eyes. That man swam against every bullshit humans can unleash but yet succeed to do the right thing.
You are one of the handful of humans, I respect and salute sir. An eternal thank you for what did and the standards you taught us to match and surpass.
First reading of emancipation proclamation - painted by then 23 year old artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter
So began what would become First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln — a painting Carpenter completed in about four months. For more than a century and a half to come, it would bedeck the United States Capitol as both a benediction and a warning, for the moment it immortalizes would cost Lincoln his life and America its awakening.
Lincoln was heavily criticized for his anti-slavery views and his political idealism. One Democratic newspaper observed that “he has been prostrated often enough in his political schemes to have crushed the life out of any ordinary man.” But this was no ordinary man. He managed to effect such landmark change by cultivating a deliberate discipline in facing criticism. While his wife would later recall that newspaper attacks pained him greatly, Lincoln met them with the sole orientation that makes courageous action in the face of criticism not only possible but sustainable over the sweep of a life.
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