Antiques.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation .... In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.

Abraham Lincoln, "Annual Message to Congress,"

December 1, 1862

Abraham Lincoln, the president of the United States, was shot on April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., where he, his wife, and two guests attended a performance of the English comedy Our American Cousin. He died nine hours later. Walt Whitman captured the sadness of the assassination in the deeply felt elegy "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." There the themes of love, death, and mourning merge into a hymn of praise for the nation. Lincoln himself is not mentioned in the poem, which is not about his services or ideals. This is simply a poetic tribute.

 
                  For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my 
                      days and lands--and this for his dear sake, 
                  Lilac and star and bird twined with the 
                      chant of my soul, 
                  There in the fragrant pines and cedars 
                      dusk and dim. 

Whitman's mythic vision celebrated Lincoln's transformation from a beleaguered man into a national symbol of the restored Union. The poet felt that only the combined genius of Plutarch, Aeschylus, and Michelangelo "assisted by Rabelais" could have captured Lincoln's likeness. A true portrait, in other words, must have the dimensions and symbols of myth.