02/12/2026
In 1859, before Abraham Lincoln became our 16th President, he attended the Wisconsin State Fair. There, amid the best examples of the state’s produce and livestock, Lincoln was asked to make a few appropriate remarks. He started out by noting the hard work that had produced that bounty and remarked that even with the best knowledge and the hardest work, results were never guaranteed, that there were always years of success and celebration and years of failure and gloom. He recounted the old story of a far eastern monarch who had gathered his wisest advisors and asked them to think up a statement that would always be true, no matter the situation, that he might keep it before him for inspiration. The councilors returned with: And this, too, shall pass away. Lincoln remarked, “How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! And this, too, shall pass away. And yet, let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”
Happy birthday, Abe! We miss you still.
