Lincoln’s words are his memorial

The view from the top of the steps on the Lincoln Memorial on in Washington, DC is one of the finest views in the American capital. You look across the reflecting pool, down the national mall to the Washington Monument and to the Capitol beyond. Standing there, at the place where Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech, you can almost feel the arc of American history bending towards justice. This tilt would not have been possible without Lincoln’s determination to win the Civil War and his realisation as the war continued that slavery could not be contained, as he had argued in his first inaugural, but must be destroyed.

Go inside the memorial and you realise the immense importance of words in American political culture, something which at least partly explains the appeal of Barack Obama.