LINCOLN DREAMS

It seems to me that there are two kinds of Americans. You are either a Washington or a Lincoln. I have discovered that I am definitely a Lincoln. Okay, this shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone. But, being in the presence of the major monuments and memorials of Washington DC made this more manifest, more real for me, than I could have ever imagined.

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Lincoln on his brooding throne, staring out over the Reflecting Pool at the giant phallus of power that was erected to Washington, seems more my kind of guy. I can relate to the melancholy, the loneliness, the feeling of having to pick up the pieces for others, the brooding, the weariness. I know the sadness in his eyes and his slight grimace.

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I can understand the words that are engraved into the wall of the Lincoln Bay of the National Cathedral.

"Abraham Lincoln / whose lonely soul / God kindled / is here remembered / by a people / their conflict healed / by the truth / that marches on"

They speak to me in a way that stories about the valor and vigor of Washington cannot.

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I stumbled upon Lincoln wherever I looked. The Union and Confederate cannon on the battlefield of Manassas (Bull Run). The gravestones of Arlington National Cemetery. The National Archives. The Library of Congress. The monuments and memorials to the Union dead and the Confederate dead, known and unknown.

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I even stumbled by happenstance upon the grave of Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, in Arlington National Cemetery. He is buried there with his wife and son. I stood there for some time staring at the the words on the sarcophagus: "Abraham Lincoln II," grandson of Abraham Lincoln I. Here the son and the grandson lie, looking out over the city that Lincoln's Army defended during the Civil War.



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The city may be named after Washington, but the ghost of Lincoln haunts its streets, its fields, its people. I am certain that he walks there at night when we are asleep, dreaming.