Yesterday I found myself at the bookstore, in front of the "New in History" shelf, mostly facing a dazzling array of recently published tomes about America's sixteenth President. I briefly wondered how one human subject could occupy so much attention, year after year, both from readers and writers. I briefly reviewed the covers, but picked up none of the books. Then I moved on.

Today I read Jill Lepore's latest piece in the New Yorker (sadly behind the paywall, but well worth the read), in which I came above this excerpt from Lincoln's first inaugural address:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

And I thought, oh.

The Speech