While Barack Obama has followed in the footsteps of his icon, Abraham Lincoln, Leonard Pitts, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, has said that Lincoln may have been appalled at Obama's victory.

Pitts pointed out that Lincoln was a 19th century white man who famously said in 1858 that "there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which... will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality.''

"Abraham Lincoln did not believe in the equality of black people. He did, however and this was no minor distinction in his era believe in their humanity. He also abhorred slavery. But he was willing to countenance it if doing so would have vindicated his primary goal: to save the Union. For him, nothing mattered more," he added.

Myths

Referring to the cartoons that showed a celebrating Lincoln, Pitts explained, How do you reconcile that with all those cartoons of Lincoln congratulating Obama? You don't. You simply recognise it for what it is: yet another illustration of how shallow our comprehension of history is, yet another instance where myth supersedes reality.

"Not that this is new or that political cartoonists are the only ones susceptible. Indeed, African Americans once tended to regard Lincoln with an almost religious reverence. Consider another Lincoln statue, this one in a park east of the Capitol: It depicts Lincoln towering over a newly freed black man who kneels at his feet. While modern eyes might find the image unbearably paternalistic, it represented the heartfelt sentiment of the black men and women who gave it to the city in 1876 in gratitude, they said, for Lincoln freeing the slaves.

Of course, Lincoln freed no slaves. That's the myth. His Emancipation Proclamation was a military measure to demoralise and destabilise the rebellious South; it covered states he did not govern, but did not apply in slaveholding states that remained under his jurisdiction.

None of which is to deny or diminish the greatness of the 16th president. His greatness stands unquestioned, unquestionable. We would be a very different nation, a lesser nation, without his political genius, his dogged faith in the unsundered Union, his refusal to accept less than Union, even when haunted by reversals and setbacks that would have broken anyone else.