Lincoln as secular saint

[LincolnToddFan]

I don't know. Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt?

She did have an aura("She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness") until the early 1980's ushered in the neo conservative Reagan era and liberalism became a bad, borderline evil word. For me she still has it. She is one of my heroes.

As for the other men you mentioned with the exception of Ronald Reagan, I at one time idolized almost every one of them. In the case of Robert F. Kennedy I even had a sort of historical crush on him as a child. And even though I remain fascinated with the Kennedy brothers(NO fiction writer could dream up a family like that!) and admire the good things they brought to America and especially to our image abroad I no longer idolize them and my admiration has dimmed considerably. I still think of MLK Jr. as an heroic but seriously flawed man and I find his courage and eloquence moving even today.

But for me, Lincoln is in a class all by himself. My interest in him began as a six year old Ohio schoolgirl, stoked when we were compelled to memorize the Gettysburg Address at age 9, and really went full tilt after I read "Love Is Eternal" at age 13. Even the disappointment and dismay I felt reading revisionist books about Lincoln(Lerone Bennett's "Forced Into Glory") has not been able to shake my intense attraction to his story. Warts, failures and all there is-in my opinion-something mystical about him that will always draw people in, no amount of bad press or revisionist writing will ever really touch him. In a hundred years people from around the globe will still trek to the Lincoln Memorial to stare gape mouthed up at the man in marble. I am sure of it.

How did he do it? How did an uneducated semi-orphan in rags emerge from the wilderness and end up in the East Room of the White House? How did he outmaneuver and outsmart everyone around him...generals, intellectuals, journalists, fellow politicians... while conducting the bloodiest, most consequential war in American history...a war that ensured the survival of America as one, united country? How did he live with and ultimately love a woman who was his temperamental opposite and who at times caused him so much suffering?

How did he cope with the monumental tragedies of his life and remain so uniquely himself to the end?