Music in the Life of President Lincoln

[L Verge]

I can't answer your question, Bill, but "music" got me thinking. As readers here know, our county has been fighting an atheist group that wants to tear down a WWI memorial to our county men who died in that war. Known as the Peace Cross, it stands forty feet high on a island in the middle of a busy intersection. However, even though it was erected in the 1920s by the American Legion, it was turned over to a state agency in the 1960s, and they maintain it as a park.

That gives the anti-religion group an in to protest for its removal (the old separation of church and state). The suits have now made it to the Supreme Court where arguments were heard yesterday. I happen to work for the government agency that owns the Peace Cross. We were discussing the situation at work, and I was reminded of the hymn that was sung at the funeral of President George H.W. Bush, and I wanted to hear it again.

Lincoln said the words first - The Last Full Measure of Devotion - but the hymn puts even more magic into those words. Here is a beautiful rendition that I wish the Supreme Court Justices could hear so that they would realize that that forty-foot cross memorializes men that fought and died so that groups like the protesters could exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1WgIeNkkHY

There is also a magnificent version performed by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Lincoln knew how to choose his words, and President Bush knew how to choose his funeral music.