“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
—Abraham Lincoln
“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. And not to Democrats alone do I make this appeal, but to all who love these great and true principles.
—Abraham Lincoln
“The people — the people — are the rightful masters of both congresses, and courts — not to overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.”
—Abraham Lincoln
Sesquicentennial is one of those very important terms that is best seen and read, vs spoken aloud. I have never heard this word used out loud.
...
“With malice toward none...”
...except the hundreds of thousands of innocents his generals had just killed in the South. As a proportion of the population today, it’s millions.
A speech can’t take away these blunders. No other nation required a war to end slavery. The amount of money the union spent on the war could have bought the freedom of every slave.
Sorry, but the Gettysburg Address must be listed as his best speech.
This is second. Profound literature and some of the most eloquent words any human has spoken.
Best Speech:
Wouldn’t a play be just dandy!
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
God bless Abraham Lincoln, a fine man and President. And may God damn the party of treason, the democratic party.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.