We Are Coming Father Abraham.

I appreciate any author who bases an argument in the historical record.

As it pertains to issues like poverty and homelessness, we find that a "higher purpose" in this context truly represents bipartisanship in Southern Indiana.

By this I mean that while certain members of both major political parties have involved themselves in the issues, it remains that in the main, not one of the higher ups will touch them. 

A People's Contest: Searching for Our Higher Purpose, by Nick Vaughn (The Aggregate News)

On July 4th, 1861, shortly after Fort Sumter had been shelled by Confederates, President Abraham Lincoln addressed Congress. In his speech to Congress, Lincoln declared that the conflict facing the fractured nation was "a People's contest," stating "On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men...”

Elevating the condition of men, as Lincoln put it, was an issue that transcended the Civil War, but by declaring the war a People's contest, Lincoln was able to frame the war in a way that would pit the foundational principles of the Constitution and of mankind's contract with government against those who sought to destroy them.

Today, there is no armed conflict that threatens to disband our Union and pit family against family, instead there is a deep political divide that threatens to irreparably fracture our civic institutions, especially at the local level. Through the partisan battles and name-calling conflicts, our community has lost sight of our higher purpose ...