Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War, famously said, upon Lincoln’s death: “Now he belongs to the ages.” Tomorrow is the 150th anniversary of that day, and it seems appropriate to note it.
In the media today, numerous people are writing about Lincoln’s death, many of them claiming Lincoln for one side or the other of our political debates. On that question, let me just repeat what I said on the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, on February 12, 2009:
“While those questions [i.e., whose side Lincoln would be on today] may be interesting for a little while, let me suggest a better question, a question that is, perhaps, in the spirit of Lincoln’s alleged response to the question of whether God was on the side of the Union. Lincoln said he was more concerned about whether the Union was on God’s side.
And so, my response to the question of whether Lincoln would be on my side if he were alive today is this: It is more important to ask whether I would have been on Lincoln’s side if I were alive then.”
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