Amid the euphoria last night in Chicago, one network's cameras zoomed in on an elderly black man who simply stood there weeping. Jesse Jackson wept quietly that way, too. So did I.

Everything in Barack Obama's bearing and speech showed he understood what we were feeling. Last night he shouldered the burdens of history and fatality with a gravitas and, I thought, a sadness reminiscent of Lincoln's.

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Polling places in New York City open at 6:00 am, and when I arrived at mine at 5:45 a.m. at least 600 people were on line, stretching from the school door near East 33rd Street and Third Avenue back to the end of the block on Second Avenue, and then down the avenue to 32nd Street. By the time I left after casting my vote, at 6:45 or so, it had grown light out, and there were at least another 600 people waiting on line.

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