Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with his army, violated the sovereign authority of the Roman senate, made himself a dictator, created a new political basis for the Roman Empire, and assured the existence of the Roman Empire for 600 years under emperors with absolute power. The deification of Abraham Lincoln for the actions he took to start the Civil War and create a new America make the deification of Julius Caesar understandable. Julius Caesar killed a half million Gauls and made war against whomever he wished, including against Romans. He had done too many unspeakable and atrocious things with superhuman cruelty to be remembered as a mere mortal. He had to be deified to keep human eyes forever blind to his monstrous excesses. Deification too was necessary for Abraham Lincoln. Historians have labored for generations to portray each example of good behavior they can discover in his humdrum life before his election as president as one of many key moments of advancement towards moral and political greatness passed through by an uncouth uneducated Kentuckian born into a 16-by-18 foot log cabin with a dirt floor. They portray his character as unflinchingly right-minded even though they all know he plotted behind the scenes like some Machiavellian renaissance prince to sandbag the state of Virginia and to force it to secede from the union so he could invade the home state of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington with a large army, annihilate its fighting men and rule over its citizens. However many prominent Americans opposed Lincoln’s war against Americans just as Cato opposed Caesar’s war against Romans. William Allen, elected to Congress from Ohio and later a governor of Ohio, was an outspoken critic of Lincoln and an opponent of his war. In 1887, Ohio donated a statue of Allen to the National Statuary Hall Collection, which has since been exhibited in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington. In 2010, the Ohio Historical Society held a statewide poll on the suitability of Allen as a distinguished representative of the state. The poll found that many Ohioans objected to Allen. On August 26, the Ohio National Statuary Committee voted to replace Allen's statue because of his criticism of Lincoln with a statue of Ohio-born inventor Thomas A. Edison who invented the light bulb. Now in 2016, Allen’s statue is being replaced and Abraham Lincoln is victorious again. Watch out when any politician crosses the Rubicon River with an army. It can have long-term consequences.
Daniel McNeill
Daniel McNeill’s novella The End of All Beginnings is available at
Read it free on Kindle with a free app or buy it on Kindle for $1.99.
Also available as a book for $5.99.
A powerful and very dramatic exploration of love and relations between
a 70-year-old man and four women, two sisters 18 and 19, their mother
46, and a lesbian friend 22. It is full of well-written dialogues between the five
In various situations including sexual relations. The drama moves fast right
from the start and it is impossible not to read it as quickly as possible (it
can be read in less than three hours} to an ending that is totally unexpected
and explosive. A complex drama that moves with its own momentum towards
one liberating ending to all its beginnings.
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