With the state of Democracy a shambles and hope being sucked out of the country like helium from a balloon, I thought I’d offer a micro vision of hope, a poem about the humble beginnings of a man who would, one day, do great and terrible things, but who believed in whatever this country is. Abraham Lincoln’s presidency is a conflicting thing, with the deaths of innocent and guilty alike staining his legacy, from the Civil War, which was fought to end slavery, to the hanging of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, still the largest mass state execution in American history on our soil. Whatever America is or thinks it is, it’s all in his life. A.J. Edwards went looking for the start of it all in “The Better Angels.”
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