But I got sidetracked reading the Chicago history of Abraham Lincoln, the only president “from” that city. He often rode up from Springfield to handle major cases, and he built his political base there from 1847 to 1860, when the new Republican Party, meeting in an oversized wooden wigwam, nominated him for president.

And that made me ask myself some questions. Is there any reason, other than the lean frame and knack for giving good speeches, to compare the two men? Is there any reason to see in Obama a Lincoln-like ability to unite a “house divided’ in our perilous times? Is that even a fair question to ask or comparison to make?

I feel justified in asking because Obama himself begged these questions when he launched his candidacy February a year ago in front of the Old State House in Springfield. He didn’t lay the Lincoln references on thick, but he didn’t have to. Even I could hear the historical echoes. It was in that building, exactly a century and a half earlier, that Lincoln had committed himself to the cause of excising the cancer of slavery from our body politic.