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In Your Words

Love, honor, and Abe

By Steve Morrison '85

Wow, Mr. Lincoln and Miami University. Ten score. 200 years. Congrats, really. Not a lot of birthday cards out there for that occasion. Hope you like these homemade ones:

Cover: So you're turning 200 ...
Inside: Honestly, I had you pegged as 135.

Cover: We'd have made a cake for your 200th birthday ...
Inside: But we didn't want to be blamed later for a wax and wick shortage.

Cover: I don't want to say 200 is old, but ...
Inside: MAN! You're like three of my grandpa!

Cover: Happy Birthday! Please be green and put this card to good use.
Inside: Like using it and all the other cards you've received over 200 years to wallpaper Madison Square Garden.

No? I'll keep working.

To those who revere them, the difficulties of Abraham Lincoln and Miami University are almost as familiar as their triumphs.

Of course, Lincoln's personal and professional hardships weren't nearly as cut and dried or as dramatic as the forwarded e-mails and various legends would have you believe. He grew up poor, had his share of setbacks, became president and endured a withering assault on his mental health from the stresses of the Civil War, only to be assassinated when the clouds began to break.

And Lincoln was not so enlightened a man for his time as to think that blacks should be on par socially with whites. He simply believed that the republic of which he was the head could not deny them the basics of liberty as delineated in the Declaration of Independence. He and the country went through hell to show slave states the error of choosing free labor over America's promise.

He was born on Feb. 12, 1809. Five days later, Miami University was founded, if only in name and aim.

Driven as we are toward a big hoo-ha when an anniversary ends in zero or five, it gets even nuttier when there is more than one zero. It's a whole year of observances, events, speeches and T-shirt sales dedicated to the proposition that if we learn nothing else about this man or this institution, we'll at least know that the year 1809 was important—even if the "why" ultimately becomes fuzzy.

Miami took a few years to get up and running, but was at one time the fourth largest university in the country. Its darkest days were also Lincoln's; the war left it with few enrollees and mountains of debt, and it closed from 1873 to 1885. Ten generals from Miami served under Lincoln—including future president Benjamin Harrison—and three for the Confederates. From that time to this, it has been regarded as a gem of public institutions of its size and of course hailed for the beauty of its campus by Robert Frost, the only household name among American poets.

Reflection and impact are what we ought to note. Like "It's a Wonderful Life" in fullest relief.

The landscape that surfaces should Lincoln's mission fail is a chilling one indeed, one with a U.S.A. and a C.S.A., at the least, likely never on good terms and neither a major player on the world's economic and cultural stages. He was but one man in power who held fast to a towering principle and got those of like mind to cling with him, damn the devastation all around.

Ohio and the region around Oxford would scarcely look the same were it not for Miami. From jobs created to jobs trained for to the patinated prestige surrounding the university, one can only call its existence and the engine of its motto "Prodesse Quam Conspici"—to accomplish rather than be conspicuous—a greater good.

Ah, I think I have a card for you both. You'll have to share it, though.

On the occasion of your 200th birthday ...

My captain of freedom
My well of knowledge

Time fells us all, but cannot touch
the lessons lasting from your deeds

History is born in the unfolding
Human aspiration was your charge

Two centuries have seen great pain
Yet from you, the urging of greatness

The dawning of a better day
We can still see, however dimly

Your vision, imperfect but resolute,
Relights our path in this celebration

We shed the light behind us
Just as we gathered it from you

My well of knowledge
My captain of freedom

May what you were and are
Shape what we are and will be

Love. Honor. Gratitude.
Happy Birthday, Abe and Miami