J. J. Lankes (1884-1960)

“Death of President Lincoln” by Walt Whitman, recording read by Brian Brown

   April 16, ’65. —I find in my notes of the time, this passage on the death of Abraham Lincoln: He leaves for America’s history and biography, so far, not only its most dramatic reminiscence—he leaves, in my opinion, the greatest, best, most characteristic, artistic, moral personality.  Not but that he had faults, and show’d them in the Presidency; but honesty, goodness, shrewd-ness, conscience, and (a new virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet rally known here, but the foundation and tie of all as the future will grandly develop,) UNIONISM, in its truest and amplest sense, form’d the hard-pan of his character.  These he seal’d with his life.  The tragic splendor of his death, purging, illuminating all, throws round his form, his head, an aureole that will remain and will grow brighter through time, white history lives, and love of country lasts.