In a log cabin in Kentucky, on February the Twelfth, a boy was born with a present most unpleasant but a glorious destiny ahead. Poverty he faced, the passing of his mother, and sufferings aplenty, to make out of him a man who'd look back at his childhood as a collection of memories most unhappy.
Schooling, he had, just enough to be called literate – but just knowing to read was enough, at least for him... He found in books a friend in a world which to him was friendless and unknown, which spread into nothingness, promising nothing but naught.
Years passed, and when the boy had hit manhood, to become a lawyer, a senator, a loyal Whig, the calamity knocked on his country’s door. He stood a-face an old rival to debate: right is what, freedom or slavery? The parties of the country broke up, and a new party rose from the debris of the Whigs and the Jeffersonians, with the young man as its presidential candidate.
In nineteen sixty, the rail candidate soared; he roared – the boy who was born in a log cabin came to be, now, the sixteenth president of the United States of America.
The South was enraged! They disliked the Rail Candidate, the slave rights activist, or, to put it in their words, the slave supremacist. They broke away; they were the Confederates. They, the Confederacy, went to war against the North, the Union.
Before the newly elected president lay the task of reuniting the country. At a time when war was inevitable, the man who was supposed to lead the country through the war was a peace-loving man who hated the very idea of killing things, let alone men. At a time when war against the South had been sparked, a man who had been born in the South, in whose veins ran Southerner blood, was the head of the North, the Union. Nevertheless, the Rail Candidate was forced to fight a civil war, forced to see his beloved America divided, forced to see his beloved South gather with enmity against him... And so began the War: war between slavery supporters and slave supporters.
After terrible years of war, a glorious battle was won at Gettysburg, followed by the eloquent Address to the nation and the greatest of all, the Emancipation Proclamation, which “came as a great beacon of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice” and “came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity”. And most importantly, the rail candidate was re-elected to office. And the moment of truth came. He did what he did best: destroyed his foes by making out of them his friends!
On April the Ninth, Nineteen Sixty-five, the Union won, the slaves were set free, and the country was one once again. With pleasure, the president enjoyed the southern song “Dixie”, knowing that once more it belonged to the entire nation. On the Fourteenth of April, as the play Our American Cousin was on in Ford’s Theatre, a gunshot rang in the Presidential Box. The President slumped over in his chair, and then he fell backward. Dramatically, John Wilkes Booth revealed himself to the audience; his role as murderer he confirmed.
Abraham Lincoln, the Man Who Saved America, was no more.
Just twenty-six years later, in Maharashtra, India, Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar was born. Just decades after America lost one of its greatest leaders, India’s constitution-maker took birth. A hundred and sixteen years back, on April the Fourteenth, the first Abolition of Slavery organisation had been formed in America.
These events established April Fourteen as a date deeply rooted in matters related to slavery and liberty, making it a day which celebrates the numerous men and women who fought relentlessly for the sake of justice, equality and brotherhood, all coupled with freedom, liberty...
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