I never realized that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin shared a birthdate, but the fact has been inescapable for the past month or so, what with it being the 200th anniversary of that date, Feb. 12, 1809. The spotlight on Lincoln reminds me of something I noticed a month or so ago, when Doug wanted to learn about the (American) Civil War. I pulled out our three-pound, foot-wide set of the 1990 Ken Burns miniseries on VHS. (My birthday present from 1998.) On the first volume, as we listened to Sam Waterston reading parts of Lincoln’s first inaugural address aloud, this line caught my ear:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.
Something was unusual about the last line. Read the rest of this entry »