If Mr.Tate, the trained and licensed American tour guide who took the wheel of my son’s car felt surprised that two brown-skinned Asians (one of whom was an old woman in her eighties), were keen to be taken round the Gettysburg Military Park, he didn’t show it. He gave us a leisurely, personal tour of all the important sites, keeping up a vivid, running commentary that held our interest for over two hours. What brings it all to my mind just now, is the historic inauguration that’s due to take place on January 20, 2009. of Barak Obama, America’s first coloured President. Athough President Obama is not descended from slaves, his father was an African from Kenya and I’ve no doubt that President Lincoln’s usually sombre expression would give way to a happy smile if he looked down on the scene in Washington today.

It was well over a century ago that Lincoln gave his "Gettysburg Address", little dreaming that his words would strike a chord in people far removed from those to whomhe spoke on that far-off day on November 19, 1863. "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." In the course of that speech he said, "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here" (referring to the soldiers who had fallen in battle). But it is precisely Lincoln’s words that engraved themselves on people’s hearts and minds. As Senator Sumner said in his eulogy on the slain president on June1, 1865, after repeating Lincoln’s words quoted above, "The world noted at once what he said and will never cease to remember it. The battle was less important that the speech." We know how true that is.

According to an article in the Newsweek of November 24, 2008, while Obama drafts his really important speeches by hand, he does have a talented young speech writer named Jon Favreau. On the day before the election, Favreau had written a draft of a victory speech and sent it to Obama and the reply came back that "Barak wants to lean to bipartisanship a little more. Even though the Democrats have won a great victory, we should be humbled by it. Figure out a good Lincoln quote to bring it all together"Favreau then picked words from that speech of Lincoln’s that are less quoted: "We are not enemies, but friends…….Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." The Newsweek writer said that to a public who were thoroughly sick of partisan bickering, "these words rang with hope as Obama spoke them on election night ……….. If there was any one message that defined the Obama campaign from the beginning, it was his promise to rise above the petty politics of division and unite the country."

Doesn’t that speak to us in our own predicament today, when people in the south tend to identify ordinary Tamil people with the LTTE? When there are hate-mongers among us and those without an ounce of compassion for the Tamil multitude that has faced and still faces the horrors of war to an extent that we cannot imagine? Going round the Gettysburg Park, we asked our Guide to stop at some of the monuments.

Although the civil war continued for another year and a half, it was the battle of Gettysburg that was decisive in turning the tide against the Confederate army. What impressed me was that the monuments to the fallen included the soldiers on both sides, the Union Army that was finally victorious, as well as those who fought valiantly for the Confederates. On the splendid Virginia Memorial to General Robert E. Lee who led the Confederate Army, shown mounted on his horse, "Traveller", there is sculpted a group representing various types who had left left civil occupations to join the Confederate Army - a professional man, a mechanic, an artist, a boy, a business man, a farmer, a youth. And words on an impressive Memorial to the North Carolina soldiers read, "To the eternal glory of the North Caroline soldier who on this battlefield displayed heroism unsurpassed, sacrificing all in support of their cause……….".

Weeks of wet weather had preceded Lincoln’s second inauguration and Pennsylvania Avenue, leading to the Capitol in Washington, was a sea of mud and stagnant water. Yet we are told that thousands of spectators stood in the thick mud to hear the President.Just as the opening lines of his Gettysburg Address are for all time, so are the concludinglines of his second inaugural speech: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Would that a statesman of the same calibre would arise to bind our nation together and bring peace and reconciliation to our land. To quote that Newsweek article again, the writer had this to say: "Obama’s example holds up a mirror showing other countries how far they have to go to address their own racial and ethnic divides." Maybe, we can pause for a moment to take stock of ourselves, to see how far we have been brutalized by a 25-year-old war that is destroying us all in more ways than one. "Hatred cannot be overcome by hatred," said the Buddha. Another man of Africa whose magnanimity and greatness of heart captured the imagination of the world, once uttered words that we might do well to take to heart. Nelson Mandela has said, "Where people of goodwill get together and transcend their differences for the common good, peaceful and just solutions can be found, even for those problems that seem most intractable."