Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Proverbs 27:17 (04/27/23)
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TITLE: A Sharper Unity | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
05/04/23 -
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Hardship wasn’t something new. The one-room log cabin he’d been born in had been cozy for the youngest son of the family as they moved from Kentucky to Indiana. He was nine when his mother passed away and for six months, he and his eleven-year-old sister survived apart from their father who left to find a new wife. Life itself was the iron that sharpened him.
At twenty-two he moved to Illinois and ran for the State Legislature. He faced war early. He passed the state bar exam, got married and had four sons. Three of those boys died. He pushed on through bouts of dark depression. Death itself was an even harder iron to sharpen him.
Moving wasn’t something new. His new home would welcome in more guests than he’d ever seen. Men of import and understanding made their way to his desk. The furniture was worn but comfortable. The space was cramped but adequate for the tasks at hand. He ran his hand over the fine cherry tabletop and remembered again the numerous trees he’d dismembered. A dull axe or a rusty axe would never accomplish the work ahead.
At the age of fifty-two, he had switched parties and become the first man to win election to the presidency with less than fifty percent of the vote from the thirty-one million residents in the thirty-three states. The southern states chose to secede. Rejection was a hard anvil to be shaped and hammered on. He won re-election in the middle of a civil war. The blood of brothers tinged the iron that shot across a divided nation and it sharpened him further.
While attending churches, the growing statesman wouldn’t confine himself to a single denomination. He wrestled against the extremes and teachings that divided the brotherhood of man. He embraced the right of individuals to express their own faith in God. Religion and polity should unite and not divide. And so, the practice of many religious elites sharpened him on the kind of Jesus he was willing to follow and obey. He loved the Lord his God and he loved his neighbor.
His iron will took up an iron pen and stroked out habeas corpus so that a government couldn’t hold citizens without trial. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation and the Homestead Act to free the enslaved and to open up new lands for expansion. The iron rails of a transcontinental passageway were laid to the west. Iron sharpened iron as a nation stumbled under a deep wound then stretched out for new hope.
Iron portrays strength of character and he transformed the chief executive role to defy Congress, the Supreme Court and even the Constitution in order to hold his people together. Civil rights were birthed. He faced the greatest challenges and achieved the greatest of accomplishments.
Much of this was because of the iron-willed group of “opinionated, stubborn and powerful secretaries” the sixteenth president stitched together. Their diverse skills and perspectives were the iron he hammered out his decisions on.
Their names still hover on the lips of historians who study this era. All of them were more educated and experienced than the one who summoned them. William H. Seward of New York, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, Edward Bates as attorney general. Then he went across party lines to include the opposition. Gideon Welles, Montgomery Blair, Edwin Stanton. His political savvy earned him a solid reputation and sharpened his resolutions for the nation.
On November 19, 1863, he stood at the site of one of the bloodiest battles in the civil war and gave his two-minute address at the National Cemetery of Gettysburg. After Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Washingtonians lined the streets in celebration. The commissioner of public buildings stretched out a banner from the Psalms. “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.”
On April 14, 1865, while watching a play at the Ford Theatre, Abraham Lincoln was shot dead. Senator Sumner wrote, “Mourn not the dead but rejoice in his life and example…”
Iron had worked its will as men stretched their wills and hearts to do work beyond the imagination of most.
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Nicely done,
Blessings~
Well deserved EC win! Thank you.