WASHINGTON — Some Presidents Day: icy with a bitter blow in the wind.

I'm telling myself the impeachment trial vote on former President Donald Trump was a moral victory. The Senate tally was 57 guilty, 43 not guilty. Seven Republicans joined 50 Democrats for a 14-vote margin. That's a rebuke for the Jan. 6 deadly riot he caused at the Capitol.

Yet it came up short of conviction, which requires 67 votes, two-thirds of the body. The House managers, full of vim and vigor, could not have moved one more sullen Republican senator.

The tragedy was the war within the Republican leader. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., clearly dearly wished to have the courage to vote against Trump, but yielded to his partisan self. He could have made all the difference.

I witnessed the drama with my own eyes, from the Senate press gallery. The face of Republican Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina reddened with anger when scenes of the attack on the Capitol were played. I suspected he'd diverge and vote "guilty," which he did.

That very chamber was invaded by white men with helmets and horns. The quaint 19th-century desks were ransacked. Confederate flags waved outside the floor.

The angry mob called for the vice president's neck as he presided over the Electoral College count that afternoon. Trump called a freshman senator to see what was going on after the violence started, as if he didn't know.

Mike Pence barely escaped with his life, as the trial showed, just steps and moments from the marauders.

One lawyer for Trump, Michael van der Veen, was just as mean-spirited and mendacious as his client. Trump knows how to pick them.

We know an American president never before seized the Capitol by murderous force to overturn an election he has lost. That makes Trump the worst president ever.

What we don't know is that it will never happen again. There's the rub: 43 Republican senators chose not to punish the former president, who will take that as a license to further destabilize and divide our democracy.

When I went to the Capitol, it was my first time back since Jan. 6. I was in the House chamber press section when we heard breaking glass, shrieks and gunshots right outside the doors. Suddenly, we were in a siege, day and night, started while democracy's work was being done.

Going back, I walked across an eerily empty National Mall, toward the marble-domed citadel, which had a massive iron fence a mile around it. I had to circle around a square Brutalist building. Sharp-shooting soldiers were stationed at every block and told me to keep my press pass visible.

Such is the shambles of a peaceful democracy, a torn, ragged legacy for President Joe Biden.

I thanked the Capitol police I saw "for everything" when I finally entered. We were lucky; it was a close call on both sides. The House managers told us the mob meant to kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spirited out in the nick of time.

Back at the beloved Capitol, the spirit was not the same. Distrust, division and sadness cut the air. As we pick up pieces of an uncivil war raging in the temple of democracy, the anger is rising like bread.

Pelosi condemned the "cowardly group of (43) Republicans ... maybe they can't get another job."

By contrast, Abraham Lincoln was our greatest president. My mind flew to him, riding the train bound for Washington in another bleak February, soon to be sworn in March 4, 1861. An unknown from Illinois, he arrived in a sharp, tense, divided capital city of a country already breaking apart.

Along the way, he survived a murder plot in Baltimore.

Several Southern slave states seceded before his inaugural. We were on the cusp of the Civil War, declared by the Confederacy. Lincoln didn't start fights, but he never lost any.

Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois, on Feb. 11, just before his 52nd birthday. At the parting, he told townspeople at the train station, "I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return."

He saved the Union and ended slavery. But Lincoln never returned home, the Civil War's final casualty.

Let's not do it over again.

Jamie Stiehm may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To read her weekly column and find out more about Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.