In biting wind, I gathered up the evil warlock’s monkey army and exiled it to our backyard fence. I jammed the broomed warlock in the soiled snow scraped from our driveway. He no longer hovers like a war drone over the Emerald City. 

My front yard is now piled with fresh snow in hopes of doing justice to my favorite president before his 216th birthday this February 12th.

I can see the labors of Mary Todd Lincoln in the photo I used to make a small clay model. Mary’s husband and their youngest surviving child Tad look fresh scrubbed. Abraham is coifed and trimmed better than legions of solo photos he had taken during his political career, wearing frumpy clothes and sporting unruly hair. 

In the photo the father and the serious boy contemplate a book so big it must have been published by a department of government explaining the progress of the war being fought mere miles from the boy and his father’s residence, the White House.

It’s nice to recall a president who sacrificed so much for his nation since his latest successor is sacrificing the nation for his own personal gain. You can see that sacrifice on the serious-minded Tad, so christened by his father because when little he wiggled like a tadpole. 

Not long before this photo was taken Tad lost his best friend and brother Willie to the Civil War. Willie died because he was infected by a Robert Kennedy-approved disease before the era of vaccinations.  Typhoid spreads in unsanitary conditions where both ends of everybody’s alimentary systems are in too close contact.  

For brother Willie the army camp on the Potomac River just a short walk from the White House, was too great a temptation not to visit. There were so many brave soldiers guarding the capital. Willie’s death plunged Mary Todd into a grieving fury and left lonely Tad a much more sober child. Their father, with a war to win, needed it to keep his grief at bay.

You can see Lincoln’s heavy lower lip in the photo. It’s unmissable in his famous sculptures. Tad has the same. Although you can’t see it, Tad also had a cleft pallet, which made eating and speaking difficult. 
I imagine that a man so fond of his sons, took extra care with Tadpole. 

Before his ascendency to save the nation he had been an attorney in Springfield, Illinois. To the considerable annoyance of his young law partner, James Herndon, Lincoln was regularly visited by his sons, who only lived a few blocks away. They lollygagged and played by their father.

I am a sucker for children’s picture books about Lincoln. One such is Lane Smith’s evocative book about the dream Lincoln described shortly before his assassination of sailing an empty ship to an unknown shore. 

There is another that tells the story about Tad begging his father to spare the life of a turkey scheduled for the White House menu. It has since become the custom for presidents to pardon turkeys before the Thanksgiving holiday – that owes its existence to President Lincoln.

Much of our knowledge about Lincoln comes courtesy of his law partner Herndon, who had been so annoyed with Lincoln’s boys. Herndon had seen Lincoln day in and day out for years as Abe plotted his political future. 

Herndon and Mary Todd never got along. Their relations went volcanic after Lincoln’s death. Herdon was appalled that people who didn’t know Abe were turning the very human Lincoln into a saint. Herdon thought that didn’t give Lincoln credit. He spent years tracking down and interviewing hundreds of people who had known Lincoln in his youth and childhood. His candid biography horrified Mary Todd but today it is the clearest view we have of a man who rose from poverty to be our most extraordinary president. 

Plagued by depression Lincoln fought it with mischief. The young Abe once lifted and turned upside down children with muddy feet to “walk” on his cabin’s ceiling. He would step out of tent revivals and imitate the hellfire and brimstone sermons for the amusement of his friends. 

He also had a soft heart. When friends amused themselves by lighting fires on the carapaces of turtles, he quickly put them out. This was Tad’s father.

There was one scene in Spielberg’s magnificent movie Lincoln that broke my heart. It shows Tad having the time of his life in the gallery of a theater for children that was entertaining them at the same hour that actor John Wilkes Booth paid a call to Ford’s Theater. Of course, mid-show, a theater functionary rushes to the stage to stop the performance and tell his audience the terrible news that President Lincoln has just been shot. I wept for Tad.

On Feb. 12, I hope you took a moment to remind yourself that presidents like Abe Lincoln helped make America an exceptional nation. Even if, like Lincoln, you are a religious skeptic, take a moment and offer a prayer that it could be so once again.

Welty raises his head above the stink of treason to breathe fresh air and blog at lincolndemocrat.com.