Today is Presidents Day. Oh, of course people link together Lincoln and Washington (who had his original birthday shifted when there was a change in the calendar not too long after his birth), but now they get to share this day with Millard Fillmore and Chester A. Arthur.
What follows are some rather interesting ways in which Americans have chosen to celebrate two Civil War-related presidents, Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. First we can see how the sixteenth president fares against Chuck Norris in a rap battle. You might want to be careful with this one, given some of the language involved.
No such concerns are involved in these moving (and shaking) tributes to the victor of Appomattox by Beyoncé Knowles in 2003. Doubtless she intended to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg. I will remind you that Julia as well as Ulysses Grant are interred in Grant’s Tomb. I suspect that if the same performance took place outside of Lincoln’s Tomb in Springfield, the ghost of Mary Lincoln would have thrown a fit.
I have always wondered who the genius was who allowed this performance to take place here.
Rapping Lincoln is back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX_1B0w7Hzc&feature=plcp