North of Gettysburg, only thirty miles from America’s greatest battlefield, I was born and raised. There a Scotsman, my eighthgrade teacher, maintained the tradition of annual student treks over the field to awaken in us the “mystic chords of memory” linking young Americans to the gravestones of the men who had given their lives that a great nation might live.

There, with my classmates, I recited the peer-less funeral oration delivered by the greatest American who ever lived. There, inspired by his examnle. I realized that onlv in America could anyone go to that house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There I learned that the untutored chief magistrate of a great nation could be the unsurpassed master of his enemies, above all the master of himself.

There for the first time I sensed the meaning of true American statesmanship.