The Twilight Zone: The Passerby

[David Lockmiller]

(11-02-2020 08:42 PM)LincolnMan Wrote:  

(11-02-2020 06:54 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

“The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come, when it will come.” – Julius Caesar, act ii, sc. 2.

Love the Shakespeare quote!

Bill, I went online to see if Lincoln had used this Shakespeare quote, but I found first this interesting quote and historical observation:

In 1849, Abraham Lincoln sought to be federal commissioner of lands. He lost that post and was offered the territorial governorship of Oregon as a consolation prize. Under the influence of his wife Mary, Lincoln turned it down. When a congressman from Chicago later suggested that his decision had been providential, Lincoln replied: “Yes, you are probably right,” adding, “I have all my life been a fatalist. What is to be, will be; or, rather, I have found all my life, as Hamlet says, ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.’” (Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, Neb.: Bison Books, 1994), 81.

And, here is the source of the Lincoln-Shakespeare connection: Churchill, Lincoln, and Shakespeare, By LEWIS E. LEHRMAN| December 16, 2016

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I went back online to the previously cited source and found this interesting little story:

William Stoddard recalled one night when the President sat in his box, awaiting the curtain: “…there were present an abnormal number of opera glasses, all of which from time to time were aimed at our box….One of the President’s oversensitive critics had a seat away back toward the entrance, and his soul, if he had one, was moved within him. He arose on his feet and shouted out something like this: ‘There he is! That’s all he cares for his poor soldiers.’

“The President did not move a muscle, but another party, in uniform, was instantly up, declaring vociferously, ‘De President haf a right to his music! Put out dot feller! De President ees all right! Let him haf his music!’ There was a confused racket for a few seconds, and then the luckless critic went out of the theater, borne on the strong arms of several boys in blue who agreed with their German comrade as to the right of Abraham Lincoln to as much theatrical relief as they themselves were having.”

(William O. Stoddard, Lincoln’s Third Secretary (Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1955), 165.)