THE FORGOTTEN MAN
Clarence Budington Kelland
Good Housekeeping Magazine 1936
(Kelland's forgotten tribute to Abraham
Lincoln)
n) 
THE FORGOTTEN MAN
Clarence Budington Kelland
YOU'LL not remember
me, I fear—the name is Lincoln—
A common man from Illinois, uncouth and homely.
The times were not so good, men's minds
were all in turmoil,
And so, lacking a greater soul to lead, they made
me President.
Myself was of the land and of the common
clay,
Ignorant of statecraft,
ignorant of those great things which men admire,
The little that I offered was a love of peace,
and, sorrow
Having been my daily fare, a sympathy with
sorrow.
IT WAS not ill that
men should die for high ideals,
But foul that, dying, they should one another
hate.
SO WHAT I strove to do in simple, fumbling way
Was quench the hatred, man for man and class for
class.
I DID not say, "This man is friend and that man
foe."
I did not seek to punish, but to reconcile.
My thoughts were such as
neighbors understood—
Not complex, innocent of
sophistries.
I understood that God was God, and Justice just,
That it was better far to pay an honest debt
With honest toil or cash.
To me it seemed the
righteous thing that there should be
No North, no South, no Rich,
no Poor, but only men and women
All entitled to such benefits as honor, labor,
honesty could earn.
ABOVE all things I loved this
land where I was born, and wished it well.
SOME thought me a
buffoon, ineptly telling some crude anecdote
In hour of crisis to ease the strain and bring
reluctant smile.
Not apt at epithet was I. I called no shameful
names.
I did not stand in any forum
to incite to hatred,
Set class to hating class, hoping thereby to win
applause
And gain for me the rancorous ballots of such men
As held the world is bettered, not by tolerant
love and understanding,
But by hate.
You may recall that once I stood upon a
battlefield and spoke.
I fear no fragments of my words
have lived to be remembered.
"A NATION in liberty conceived and dedicated,"
so I said,
"To the proposition
that all men are equal."
And then, if memory fails me not, with feeble
voice
And halting style—words which might not be amiss
today:
"It is for the living to be dedicated here
to the unfinished work,
To the great task remaining
here before us, that from these dead
We take increased devotion to the cause, and so
resolve
That they shall not have
died in vain.
But that this nation, under
God,
Shall a new birth of
freedom have.
And that shall never vanish from the earth
Government of and for and by
the people of this land."
IT MAY be you will
not remember me.
The name is Lincoln—The Forgotten Man.
