Earlier today I had to run up town to the Post Office to mail some letters to of all places South Carolina. As I drove home I happened to catch a bit of Rush Limbaugh’s show where he was talking about Obama’suse of Lincoln during his campaign and now with the announcement that Obama would use the Lincoln Bible during the Inauguration. Obama’s Inauguration will be the first since 1861-64 to use the Lincoln Bible and Rush seems to think that this is just another way in which Obama is trying to make himself look like a new Lincoln…and according to el Rushbo…the next FDR…but that is beyond my focus here.
What I think Rush my not be taking into account here is the historical connection between Lincoln and Obama. Not that the two men are related or that their politics are the same but how they are connected through the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Had it not be for Lincoln, Obama could not be in the situation in which he now finds himself…as President Elect. Maybe, just maybe, Obama’suse of the Lincoln Bible is not to associate himself with Lincoln on the political basis, but on a historically significant basis. One that includes an understanding of the Civil War from the Emancipationist viewpoint.
With Obama being our President during the at least the early part of the 150th Anniversary of The War of the Rebellion we may finally see the war placed in its proper context…and finally out from under the shadow of the myth of the Lost Cause.
