Word: lincolnisms
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...would take six decades for the U.S. to acknowledge Haiti's independence. By the time Abraham Lincoln did so in 1862, America was already at war with itself over the issue of slavery. Haiti, burdened by its postindependence isolation and the 100 million francs in payment it was forced to give France for official recognition--an amount estimated to be worth nearly $22 billion today, which some Haitians insist should be repaid--began its perilous slide toward turmoil and dependency, resulting in a 19-year U.S. occupation and two subsequent interventions in the past 100 years. In Notes...
...they should note that his is hardly the first of its kind. George Washington ad-libbed the line "So help me God" at the end of his swearing-in, and Thomas Jefferson extolled Jesus as the most important philosopher in his life two centuries before Bush ever did. Abraham Lincoln, the President whom Bush says he admires most, called the Civil War God's punishment for the sin of slavery, and the presidency an office that drove him to his knees "by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go." William McKinley decided to invade the Philippines...
...that all could worship as they pleased. Washington was a Freemason and a deist; no one knew what he truly believed. Jefferson read the Bible every day--even wrote his own version--but that was because he wanted to cut out all the miraculous parts, including the Resurrection. Lincoln worshipped faithfully but never joined a church, and was labeled an infidel by at least one congressional opponent. And it was Bill Clinton, viewed by his foes as the devil's disciple, of whom Billy Graham said in 1996, "He believes the Bible. He believes in Christ. He believes that...
...happen on his watch. That is understandable (if characteristically self-centered) because the best chance any President has for greatness is to be in power during war or disaster. Apart from the Founders, the only great President we have had in good times is Theodore Roosevelt. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were the "luckiest" of them all, having had the opportunity to take the country triumphantly through the two greatest wars in U.S. history...
Unlike other Presidents--except, perhaps, for Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson--Reagan came to power as the leader of an ideological movement: in his case, a fierce conservatism forged and tempered by decades of disdain from the nation's moderate media and political establishment. In retrospect, the movement provided a necessary corrective for the slowly corroding industrial-age liberalism favored by the Democrats who controlled Congress. Reagan's followers were so eager for success that they were willing to tolerate some flagrant inconsistencies in his governance. His big 1981 tax cut was followed by two years of large, if undramatized...