Both Sides of A Story

"He was a secretive man, who kept his own counsel.  He was an ambitious man of humble origins, with colossal designs on the future.  And it would always be advantageous not to be closely known, never to be transparent. Passing a farmer on a day, he would tip his hat and grin.  Everybody knew him.  Nobody knew him.  He would play the fool, the clown, the melancholy poet dying for love, the bumpkin.  He would take the world by stealth and not by storm.  He would disarm enemies by his apparent naiveté, by seeming pleasantly harmless.  He would go to such lengths in making fun of his own appearance that others felt obliged to defend it.   

 Daniel Mark Epstein, The Lincolns:  Portrait of a Marriage

A few women I shared time with in a writers circle, were well versed in their history, or should I say their southern version of history.  There were twelve of us and I was one of the youngest by fifteen years.  Their downplaying of Abraham Lincoln was so apparent I hesitated to disclose I once lived in a town named Lincoln.  As these were genteel women, they never really got into name calling, but their derogatory references clearly displayed what army they stood by. 

Having lived the majority of my life in the north, I was somewhat taken aback by the lack of honor for Lincoln.  I just never thought any differently, and therein lies the problem. In the presence of these southern belles,  I opened my heart and closed my mouth. I began to understand a new perspective.  I, of course, did not embrace it, but I understood it.  Ignorance is avoided and compassion instilled when one listens to both sides of a story.

I have never really thought about Abraham Lincoln without simultaneously thinking of freedom and slavery.  The few men I admire politically held and hold  the same sense of equality dear.  How many presidents, leaders, wars and human sacrifices will we spiral through before the concept of freedom is clearly in place?