Shall Not Perish From This Earth

Day 15 of Autism Acceptance Month

Ward Hill Lamon—Abraham Lincoln’s former law partner, friend and sometime bodyguard—told a famous story about the 16th U.S. president’s premonition of his own death. According to the tale, just a few days before his assassination on April 14, 1865, Lincoln shared a recent dream with a small group that included his wife, Mary Todd, and Lamon. In it, he walked into the East Room of the White House to find a covered corpse guarded by soldiers and surrounded by a crowd of mourners. When Lincoln asked one of the soldiers who had died, the soldier replied, “The president. He was killed by an assassin.”

On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was pronounced dead at 0722 hours, after being shot at Ford's Theater the night before by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. 
Still one of the most well-loved presidents, Lincoln rose from an impoverished childhood, to failing school, to eventually becoming the sixteenth President of The United States. Lincoln portrayed MANY traits of autism, was taken seriously by few at first, and is a wonderful example of someone who "rose above."
Just like the predictions of Joan of Arc and Sitting Bull, both of whom I have also featured, Lincoln had premonitory experiences. See the first paragraph on how he supposedly predicted his own death...just a few days before his assassination. 

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

-The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln


  
"Hard Times" cover by Eastmountainsouth-beautiful song written in Lincoln's time.
Let's all learn from Lincoln...and learn to rise up from unassuming beginnings and make a difference!