Well, I’ve got to tell you that I’m mighty proud.

This business took a mite longer than it should have. I always said that I walked slowly, but I never walked backward. Well, I’m afraid this country has taken some steps back, but here we are finally, with young Mr. Obama ready to move into the place.

That’s what I called the Presidency.

I confess to a bit of puzzlement about how this accomplishment occurred through the auspices of the Democratic Party. When I departed this world, it was pretty much a given that the Negro supported us Republicans and vice versa. I wouldn’t have bet even a penny – and I do appreciate my likeness on them – that they would ever be comfortable settled in a party that once harbored Copperheads.

Now, that reminds me of a story. Putting together my government, I suggested the names of some of the lawyers with whom I rode circuit in the early days. Judge Gillespie was down from Chicago and he expressed astonishment.

“But Abe,” he protested, “those lawyers are all Democrats.”

“I know it,” I said, “but I would rather have Democrats I know than Republicans I don’t.”

And that is the way of it. Some of these Republicans, I just don’t know anymore.

Now it’s true that I didn’t foresee this back then. The question of the colored race was one that many people had to grapple with. In one of my debates with Douglas, I expressed doubt that the two races could ever live together in social and political equality.

Better to be silent and be thought a fool, I used to say, than to speak and remove all doubt. Well, that time, to use Stanton’s words, I reckon I was a “damned” fool.

So I understand the criticism for not immediately freeing those in bondage in Union-held parts of Missouri and Kentucky.

But you may not recall that my Emancipation Proclamation prompted hot talk that the Western states would secede as well. So, I can only beg your pardon and plead that those were troubled times when it was not clear how our nation could stand.

I like to think I gave my measure toward this end, but I’ve been given too much credit. When Richmond finally fell, those poor Negroes there called me “Father Abraham” and knelt. No, I told them, and I tell you, it was all so much bigger than me.

Only the Almighty knows the depth of the well of misery that was poured out upon the slave, but also later on his grandchildren. All those burning crosses, the lynchings, the indignity of Jim Crow, the slurs and the hate. How they did suffer.

You must know how it shook my soul when that Georgia preacher, Martin Luther King Jr., became one more to fall to the assassin’s bullet. “I have a dream,” he had called out, right out front here. My dream was much the same, of divisions erased, of unity and prosperity for all Americans.

I can remember another outstanding fellow, my friend Frederick Douglass. Last time I saw him on earth was at the reception after my second inauguration. I heard later that policemen actually tried to push him out a White House window. Some thought a black man shouldn’t even be in the White House, unless a servant.

Now, it is so fitting and proper that a man with African blood will be the rightful resident of that old house.

I have a notion he and his wife may find some ghosts there, some of those young Union boys who bivouacked on the ground floor and who shed blood later. Perhaps even Willie is there. He will delight in the company of those two little ladies running happily up and down the halls.

I tell you that I’ve been watching this young man, and I have been impressed. Reminds me of myself some. Both tall, skinny politicians from Illinois, although not born there. Did you know that I was branded an “infidel” by a Methodist preacher when I first ran? How things do not change.

Both of us were helped along mightily by the Chicago crowd, including the Tribune. Both of us were ambitious, were considered short on experience. Both of us were critical of needless militarism beyond our borders.

I like his calm. And doesn’t he give a fine speech, a thing folks used to say about me. That little effort at Gettysburg certainly served me better than any man should expect.

I think I still have that envelope somewhere about my person. Ah, yes, here it is … “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Right there in the first line.

Now, doesn’t that still have a pleasant ring to it?

Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was the 16th president of the United States. (His ghost writer is Darryl Levings, the national editor of the Kansas City Star. E-mail: [email protected].)