Image via WikipediaToday is the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's
speech at Cooper Union in New York City.
We’d like to say something clever, and original;
but we're seldom original, and never clever.
Sure . . . there are all the tidbits we pick up here and there,
like that Lincoln’s voice was, unexpectedly,
a shrill, tweedy thing . . .
Or, that he wasn't very popular until AFTER he got shot.
{Which kind of explains why he got shot.
AND why he became popular afterwards}
{We DO SO LOVE our hero’s dead.
JC, Ghandi, MLK, JFK . . .}
Then, there's his mad wife, Mary. . . . Hmmm. . . .
"Mad Wife" now, there's an inevitability.
Lincoln's birthday was recently celebrated,
We COULD talk about his chopping down the cherry tree,
. . . Uh . . . uhm. . . er . . . uh, was that George? Never mind.
Okay, okay, let’s stick to the speech at Cooper Union.
Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union Address:
"If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality - its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension - its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?"
.
Aw, nuts! Ye kin read this for yourselves,
As ye kin also Google, Wiki, n' Yahooey
as many trivia-n-tidbits as ye' like to research.
Hmmmmm . . .
so? What now?
Well,
When we were a young man
we had the opportunity to
work at Cooper Union
for a summer.
We were involved in a project to
study traffic patterns in New York City.
The task force we worked for
included other students, and a staff
of computer scientists, engineers,
secretaries, clerks, and others as one may expect
in an office environment of this sort.
The project itself may be of some interest,
yet that will have to wait for another day.
Today we'd like to tell you of a very bad thing
that we did then, and which haunts us to this day.
Ye see, there was this woman who worked there,
ten or fifteen years our senior and we were
very attracted to her,
. . . fiercely attracted.
We were young, and we acted impulsively,
seldom considering the landscape.
So, we asked her on a date. She’d been
acting receptive, as expected when we asked she accepted.
shortly, we came to realize that this woman was
our bosses' girlfriend!
We were horrified!
What would he think, say or do?
As the date approached we worried.
Finally, the day arrives, the woman comes to
the office dressed to the nines,
and . . . we chicken out.
We make up some lame excuse, which she politely
accepts, though she is visibly shaken and embarrassed
by our withdrawal.
. . .
So, there it is. we asked this woman on a date,
then stood her up. We worked there for a couple of months
after this and she never looked our way, or spoke to us again.
And the embarrassment was unbearable.
(years later, her boyfriend taught a class
we attended, and spent the semester trying
to place us in his memory. but we digress . . .)
So aside from taking place at Cooper Union,
you may ask, what does this have to do with
Lincoln’s speech.
Not much. but it seems to us,
upon reading said speech, that though Lincoln
had the conviction of his anti-slavery stance,
he was more concerned with preserving the union
than he was in abolishing slavery. He was ready to compromise.
Basically,
you may keep your slaves; we will not take them away,
If you agree not to expand the practice into the territories,
and further agree not to break up the government.
This is akin to asking the anti-slavery movement
on a date then standing it up in order to keep
his job. Sort of like we did with our bosses' girlfriend.
Who are we to judge? whaddooweenoh?
Except,
today we have a level of ideological split in this
country, not seen since Lincoln's time.
We have a President
who seeks the same sort of compromise as Lincoln.
We have a President who will compromise
progressive conviction
for the sake of preserving national unity.
We don't like how the story ends,
we didn't like how it ended for us,
nor do we like how it ends
either for the country,
. . . nor for the President .
..
.ero
.
Aw, nuts! Ye kin read this for yourselves,
As ye kin also Google, Wiki, n' Yahooey
as many trivia-n-tidbits as ye' like to research.
Hmmmmm . . .
so? What now?
Well,
When we were a young man
we had the opportunity to
work at Cooper Union
for a summer.
We were involved in a project to
study traffic patterns in New York City.
The task force we worked for
included other students, and a staff
of computer scientists, engineers,
secretaries, clerks, and others as one may expect
in an office environment of this sort.
The project itself may be of some interest,
yet that will have to wait for another day.
Today we'd like to tell you of a very bad thing
that we did then, and which haunts us to this day.
Ye see, there was this woman who worked there,
ten or fifteen years our senior and we were
very attracted to her,
. . . fiercely attracted.
We were young, and we acted impulsively,
seldom considering the landscape.
So, we asked her on a date. She’d been
acting receptive, as expected when we asked she accepted.
shortly, we came to realize that this woman was
our bosses' girlfriend!
We were horrified!
What would he think, say or do?
As the date approached we worried.
Finally, the day arrives, the woman comes to
the office dressed to the nines,
and . . . we chicken out.
We make up some lame excuse, which she politely
accepts, though she is visibly shaken and embarrassed
by our withdrawal.
. . .
So, there it is. we asked this woman on a date,
then stood her up. We worked there for a couple of months
after this and she never looked our way, or spoke to us again.
And the embarrassment was unbearable.
(years later, her boyfriend taught a class
we attended, and spent the semester trying
to place us in his memory. but we digress . . .)
So aside from taking place at Cooper Union,
you may ask, what does this have to do with
Lincoln’s speech.
Not much. but it seems to us,
upon reading said speech, that though Lincoln
had the conviction of his anti-slavery stance,
he was more concerned with preserving the union
than he was in abolishing slavery. He was ready to compromise.
Basically,
you may keep your slaves; we will not take them away,
If you agree not to expand the practice into the territories,
and further agree not to break up the government.
This is akin to asking the anti-slavery movement
on a date then standing it up in order to keep
his job. Sort of like we did with our bosses' girlfriend.
Who are we to judge? whaddooweenoh?
Except,
today we have a level of ideological split in this
country, not seen since Lincoln's time.
We have a President
who seeks the same sort of compromise as Lincoln.
We have a President who will compromise
progressive conviction
for the sake of preserving national unity.
We don't like how the story ends,
we didn't like how it ended for us,
nor do we like how it ends
either for the country,
. . . nor for the President .
..
.ero
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