ABRAHAM LINCOLN Part Two the Life and Times by JR McCarthy

Shortly before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln is said to have been afflicted by unshakable fatigue, a persistent coldness in his hands and feet, and severe headaches.

A number of medical historians have taken this to mean that
Lincoln was dying of heart disease at the time of his violent
death. One explanation for the source of this heart disease ? an
explanation that has gone in and out of fashion nigh on the last
twenty years, is that Lincoln suffered from Marfan''s Syndrome, a
genetic disorder that attacks the connective tissue of the body,
and causes, among other internal calamities, "aortic dilatation."
People who suffer from Marfan''s Syndrome usually have
disproportionately long arms and legs, and long and narrow facial
features. The condition can be the cause of both myriad
difficulty and sudden demise: for the sufferer, it both confounds
and constricts his life and times.

In discussions of historical magnitude, "What if" is always a
tempting exercise, but it is ultimately futile, and usually heart-
breaking. "What if Lincoln had not been assassinated?" has been
identified, in this very space, as one of the more poignant
examples. This speculation into Abraham Lincoln''s medical
history could begin to negate the question of what an un-
assassinated Lincoln would have done, with its suggestion that
Lincoln was not long for this world even as John Wilkes Booth
crept up behind him. This speculation, incidentally, will also
remain mere speculation: the experts are divided on the
implications, and no definitive answer will ever be given. Those of
us who look to the life and times of Lincoln ? and for that matter,
those of us who look to the record of history at all ? must make
what we can of what is known, and must not cloud our reason, or
break our hearts, with "what might have been." God knows, the
record of "what is" is unreasonable and heart-breaking enough.

Much of the much that is known of the life and times of Lincoln is
astonishing and disproportionately tragic. Lincoln himself once
observed that if his own melancholy, "was equally distributed to
the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on
Earth." Lincoln was speaking here about his personal and
palpable depression. Any examination of Lincoln''s life and times
suggests that he might have said the same thing about the
incident of personal bereavement and disappointment in his life:
Lincoln lost his mother when he was nine, and his one and only
full-blooded sibling, his sister, by the time he was twenty. He had
long been estranged from his father, and did not attend his father''
s funeral. He is said to have courted the woman he married only
after losing the love of his life to typhoid fever. He was
predeceased by two of his four children, and is the only American
president to have endured the loss of a child during his
presidency. Before assassination turned him into a martyred icon,
he was as reviled and as bitterly criticized as any leader in history.
He presided over the bloodiest conflict in our history, and veered,
for the duration of his presidency, perilously close to the precipice
of personal and political ruin.

It was Lincoln''s fate, and to a great extent, the consequence of
his formidable ambition, to endure much of his personal grief at
the center of American history. It seems to me that, regardless of
what he may have felt or wished, it was inevitable that his
importance to history ? his greatness, if you will - would exist on
two levels: he would become as much of a power of example to us
for what he endured as for what he accomplished.

The playwright James Goldman, in The Lion in Winter, put these
words into the mouth of King Henry II: "My life, when it is written,
will read better than it lived." This may be an accurate
assessment of the anatomy of every great life, just as it is surely a
heart-breaking assessment. For the American schoolboy I once
was, and for generations of American schoolboys before me,
Abraham Lincoln is the paradigm of the American Dream ? the
original rags to riches story, and both the first and last word on
America as the land of opportunity. If the schoolboy persists in his
love of history, and continues, as he grows to be a man, to look to
history for a sense of both what is possible, and of what is
endurable, the life of Lincoln remains essential. Myths are
debunked, inaccuracies are exposed, unflattering and even
antagonizing statements are documented, but the trajectory of
one man''s life from grinding poverty to historical primacy remains.
The arc of Lincoln''s life, from the wilderness of Kentucky to the
Lincoln Memorial, continues to be the standard to which
schoolboys aspire, and against which all Presidents ? and all
Presidencies ? are ultimately judged.

The tragic life and times of Abraham Lincoln seems to me to have
been well beyond the endurance of anyone other than the
strongest and most resourceful of individuals. It is thus a story
that is at least as valuable to the man I am as to the boy I was.
The boy was taken with the litany of his historical
accomplishments. The man is astonished by the simple truth that
he stood up to the slings and arrows. The boy is inevitably
confronted with the gray areas that popular history finds both
cumbersome and counter-productive. The man assesses the
record, warts and all, and finds among the unremarkable flaws
and shortcomings a remarkable capacity for intellectual and
personal growth. The man discovers, in this capacity for personal
growth, the true greatness of the historical luminary, and the seed
of whatever virtue he may assign to himself.

History is shaped for the better only by those who are tempered,
rather than hardened, in the kiln of experience. History is guided,
and perhaps even redeemed, by those who perceive, even in the
most crushing realities, the seeds of wisdom and abiding truth.
The right person, at the propitious moment, can change the world
at large All people, at all times, are required to endure the
travails of life, and invited to improve through that endurance. It
is momentous to consider that at the most perilous point of
American History, such a man is at the center of events. What
might have been had he lived a little longer is not nearly as
crucial as what might have been had he not lived in the first place.

Two hundred years after his birth, and one hundred and forty-four
years after his death, Abraham Lincoln remains at the center of
our national identity, and he is never far from the center of our
national discourse. He had a crucial role in salvaging our national
identity, and he had a crucial role in eradicating our national
shame. He is the most enduring example of the typically American
ideal that each American can plot his or her own course, and
change the world for the better in the process. He is still all of
these things to me, but his legacy to the man I am, and to the man
I am still becoming, seems larger to me with each passing year.
Lincoln endures, because Lincoln endured.
JR McCarthy

JR McCarthy is a published author and also a staff writer for ArtistsILove.com