This post makes the second response to the movie Patrick and I watched several weeks ago about the life of the great race horse Secretariat. The idea that a horse could run with such heart led Patrick to a comparison to two great American statesmen.
The Triple Crown belongs to Secretariat. At his death, his heart was found to be over
two times the size of the largest hearts of only racing horses. Two of the highest achievements in the
formation of America which demonstrate the role of a great heart are those of
Sam Houston and Abraham Lincoln.
Both men were born and bred into what is understood
to be the spirit and the life of a frontiersman of the nineteenth century. Yet neither man was rough-hewn; they were
both men of letters and were capable of demonstrating human behavior across the
spectrum of being able to be “drawers of water and hewers of wood,” and yet
capable of partaking in the most sophisticated and intellectual manner in
discussion.
Both Houston and Lincoln had enormous setbacks
before they embarked on their final mission into immortality, in the same way
that Secretariat lost before the Kentucky Derby because of an abscess that caused
many to abandon hope in him. Houston’s lowest point was before the decisive war
of San Jacinto. What Houston achieved by
gaining the independence of Texas was the way forward for the land between the
Pacific and the Atlantic to become one country.
At Gettysburg all hope in a Union victory looked
lost. Lincoln was in a sea of wounded
and dead bodies, all around as far as could be seen. Yet he gave his address to the surrounding
crowd, to the nation, and to history, thereby ensuring that there would be one
nation.
These three achievements took great heart—nothing less.
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