US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has urged Americans to follow the example of Abraham Lincoln by putting aside political and racial differences in the search for solutions to the country’s problems.
Speaking at the Capitol on the 200th anniversary of the president’s birth, Mr Obama said he felt a special gratitude to Lincoln, without whom his own story would have been impossible.
Lincoln’s treatment of Confederate prisoners at the end of the civil war should serve as a model of reconciliation in the service of national unity, Mr Obama said.
“With victory at hand, Lincoln could have sought revenge. He could have forced the south to pay a steep price for their rebellion. But despite all the bloodshed and all the misery that each side had exacted upon the other, no Confederate soldier was to be punished, Lincoln ordered,” the president said.
“That was the only way, Lincoln knew, to repair the rifts that had torn this country apart. It was the only way to begin the healing that our nation so desperately needed. For what Lincoln never forgot, not even in the midst of civil war, was that despite all that divided us – north and south, black and white – we were, at heart, one nation and one people, sharing a bond as Americans that could not break.”
Lincoln is the most revered president in American history and the subject of more than 16,000 books in English – more than anyone, apart from Jesus Christ and William Shakespeare. His bicentenary was marked by events throughout the United States, including a special exhibition at the Library of Congress and the reopening of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, where he was assassinated soon after the start of his second term.
Mr Obama has invoked Lincoln more than any other president, launching his presidential campaign in Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln was a legislator, and using his Bible at his inauguration.
The president’s remarks at the Capitol came as Congress moved towards approving a massive economic stimulus plan with almost no Republican votes. Mr Obama said Lincoln should inspire legislators to rediscover the spirit of bipartisanship.
“And so even as we meet here today, at a moment when we are far less divided than in Lincoln’s day, but when we are once again debating the critical issues of our time – and debating them fiercely – let us remember that we are doing so as servants to the same flag, as representatives of the same people, and as stakeholders in a common future.”