For dinner I made what the English call passties. I rolled my biscuit dough out thin, put canned corned beef hash between two layers, pinched the edges together, and baked them brown. They were good, which was a surprise, because my messes don't always turn out so well. They were better than the ones Jenny and I tried to eat in England, not so rich and greasy.

Sunday,  I watched "Looking For Lincoln" on PBS, then Downton Abbey episode 6. It seems impossible that next Sunday's episode will be the finale of D.A.'s season 3. Tempus fugit.

As always when studying Lincoln, one is left with contradictory feelings about the man. Lincoln was a lawyer, with a deep respect for legality. He made seemingly contradictory decisions, always based on the law, such as protecting a black woman against the claims of a southern plantation owner by finding that the woman was a legal resident of Illinois, then finding that a slave who had run away to Illinois must be returned because he was "legal property."

Faced with deciding murder charges against a group of more than a hundred American Indians, he had about 30 of them hanged (I'm not certain of these numbers, but the proportions are about right).

Lincoln was also a 19th century white man, with his share of conventional flaws and prejudices. He did not believe that Negroes were mentally and physically equal to whites, but he always said that slavery was wrong.

Doris Kearns Goodwin co-hosted the show, with Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. Goodwin's book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln, was one of the best biographies I've ever read about anybody. It pointed out that Lincoln chose Seward and other political opponents as his closest advisors, because he knew he needed them if he was going to win the war. The PBS program also illustrated this point.

In spite of recognizing his defects and disagreeing with some of his opinions, I am left with admiration for his insight, personality and power in winning the elections and the war, and with profound pity for his personal life. With a contrary wife, the loss of two young children, and a country tearing itself apart, it's no wonder that his originally depressed psyche dropped lower and lower, until the end.