SusieQ's Place: Holidays

The promise of the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal.

"[............ ............... ...................] is a monstrous usurpation, a criminal wrong, and an act of national suicide." "It will be known in all history as the most wicked, atrocious and revolting deed recorded in the annals of civilization."

"Mr............... will go down to posterity as the man who could not read the signs of the times, nor understand the circumstances and interests of his country; who could not calculate his own resources nor appreciate those of his enemy; who had no political aptitude; who plunged his country into a great war without a plan; who failed without excuse, and fell without a friend."

"....the craftiest and most dishonest politician that ever disgraced an office in America."

"........... is by all odds the weakest man who has ever been elected......he is vain, weak, sterile, hypocritical, without manners.....swears more than Uncle Toby, and is beneath contempt in every particular, morally and mentally."

I gleaned the above quotations from a book entitled The Political Cartoons of the Whispering Gallery. The gallery is in the new Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Illinois which we visited this past weekend. The political cartoons framed and hanging on the walls of the gallery remind me that the years can come and go, but people do not change that much in the process. Lincoln's contemporaries said awful things about him just like Bush's contemporaries are doing with Bush today. People are still just as mean and ornery as they have ever been.

I don't wish to turn this piece here into a political statement of my own necessarily, but the cartoons I saw make such a glaring point about the lengths to which people involved in politics will go to gain the support of the masses in order to further their own political agenda. The masses beware!

The first quotation above referred to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and appeared in the Chicago Times first on September 24, 1862 and again on January 3, 1863. Imagine someone calling this document a "wicked, atrocious and revolting deed."

The second quotation referred to President Lincoln and appeared in the London Morning Post on October 5, 1864. How many times have we heard Bush accused of similar things?

The third quotation referred to President Lincoln, too, and appeared in the Illinois State Register.

The fourth quotation also referred to President Lincoln and appeared in the Wilmington (NC) Daily Journal on June 20, 1861.

In celebration of Independence Day, my husband and I joined our daughter and her four children and drove down to Springfield to visit the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and other historical sites there.

On the walls of the Whispering Gallery there in the museum are pictures of one political cartoon after another and commentaries pertaining to President Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln. Their contemporaries said unbelievably cruel things about the Lincolns. President Lincoln was portrayed as an ape, a monkey, a buffoon and more. These cartoons and commentaries made me realize that harsh ridicule of a sitting president by his contemporaries is not anything new. History went on to show that President Lincoln was not the vulgar scoundrel he was portrayed at times as being by his political foes. Perhaps history will do the same with President Bush.

I highly recommend the Lincoln Presidential Museum.

This is the front of the museum. Across the street is the Lincoln Presidential Library. It was not open the day we visited.

Our daughter, her four children, my husband and myself posing with the Lincolns.

The museum has a room called Mrs. Lincoln's Attic which is designed to entertain children and help them connect to that period in history through a variety of toys and costumes. Above are some of our grandchildren playing with these toys.