One of our youths came up to me a few meetings back, just as I entered the gym. By the bedazzled looks of one of the other adults in the room, I knew he had been up to one of his mind games. He's a genius, and likes to use his intellect to get reactions from people. And now it was my turn.

"If you could go anywhere in time and visit one person, who would it be, and when?"

Ha! I had him! That was a question I had asked myself many times, during the empty hours on those long straight highways of ours. I had an immediate answer.

I would ride the train with Abraham Lincoln on his way back from Gettysburg to Washington.

The young man was foolish enough to ask why, so as we dodged flying dodgeballs, I told him. All of it. Certainly a lot more than he wanted hear, the whole history lesson, as well as I know it.

If you watched TNT at any time a year or so ago, you cannot have helped but learn about the Civil War battle at Gettysburg. 'Til then I had hardly paid attention to it. It's the aftermath I find remarkable. We built a cemetery and memorial.

We built a cemetery and memorial to both sides, the winners and the losers. While we were still at war with each other, still killing each other, still filling more graves. Maybe that was common then, in the age of gallantry, I don't know. But it strikes me as remarkable.

But that's not why I would want to ride with Lincoln.

His Gettysburg Address is almost always included in any discussion or instruction on great, eloquent and inspirational writings. Up there with the Declaration of Independence. He wrote it on the train ride to the dedication services for the cemetery, a hastily jotted down gathering of his thoughts.

"Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers�"

I know I had to have read that in school. I recognized the beginning. But it wasn't until many years later, when I heard someone recite the entire speech, that it struck me. How perfect it was. How farsighted it was. How simple.

Lincoln had been invited to the November dedication almost as an after thought. They already had a couple great orators lined up on the itinerary, men who knew how to impress with great words and long speeches. Nobody remembers them, or what they said that day. It's probably written down somewhere, but nobody teaches it.

But the Presidency was not viewed as a post of great leadership, a representation of all things American back then. He was just a guy voted in to do a pretty unpopular job. Inviting him to speak was sort of like inviting the mayor to speak at the Olympics. Sure, he's gotta be there, but he's not the main show. Expectations for Lincoln were low, and he whipped off the speech at the last minute.

Lincoln spoke for two and a half minutes. Photographers failed to get any pictures for those of us in the future, because their equipment was slow, cumbersome, and they expected to have up to an hour to get set up and shoot. One managed to get a picture of the top of Lincoln's head as he was sitting back down. I wonder if anyone there realized they were listening to one of the greatest speeches in human history?

Historians report Lincoln considered his presentation at Gettysburg to be a failure, that he had failed to rise to the grandeur of the occasion, the expectations of the audience.

I have always admired Lincoln, even though he was a Republican. The Great Emancipator, the man who freed the slaves. Later we were told, in the age of correctiveness, that he didn't really care about freeing slaves, it was just a political tactic to help win the war. Now I learn, thanks to educational tv, he secretly met with Frederick Douglas shortly before the 1864 election, when Lincoln thought for sure he would lose and that McClelland, the Democratic candidate (shame on you, Democrats!) would win the election, make peace and allow the south to secede. And keep their slavery intact, of course. So Lincoln called in Douglas to plot and plan a scheme for essentially speeding up the Underground Railroad and getting as many runaway slaves out of the south as fast as possible before that happened.

Abraham thought he had only a few months left in office, and wanted to use his powers to free as many as possible, before the door to freedom shut down in their faces forever. Political tactic my ass.

And he went back to DC thinking he had failed. He would be assassinated five months later. But if I could travel in time I would not want to change that. The time line would have to unfold the way it did. But I would like to share that train ride with him, to discuss his speech, and let him know he didn't fail. It would be the least I could do.