Free Republic

Of all the places in Washington, Beto O’Rourke chose to run to the Lincoln Memorial. Jogging through an early winter storm in the capital the week following his loss in the race for U.S. Senate, O’Rourke found himself, gimpy knee and all, running up the steps of the majestic monument to the 16th president. There, he wrote in a Medium post, he paused to read the words of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Suddenly, his knee stopped hurting—as if Honest Abe’s words had a special healing power (but “maybe it just needed to fully warm up,” he wrote).

May God bless America on this Thanksgiving Day in 2018! Many Americans on the Thanksgiving holiday coming this week will likely breathe a huge sigh of relief that the divisiveness of the midterm elections are over. Of course, that will be true if families and friends can put aside that divisiveness in their hearts in the millions of homes where Thanksgiving will be celebrated across America.

GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- In the days that followed Abraham Lincoln's 272-word speech to thousands of onlookers in this small Pennsylvania farm town, few newspapers in the country immediately reported on the speech. When they did, explains historian Michael Kraus, it was mostly dour examination filled with misquotes of the 16th president's words. "There were a lot of mistakes in those first reports. Words weren't heard well. Order was mixed up. The speech didn't appear in every newspaper the next day, or the next day, or the next day," Kraus said from his artifact-filled basement office at the Soldiers & Sailors...

Everyone has posted the speech itself (and it's included here), but the background information is also interesting - not only the situation in America at the time, but also the extent to which the structure of the speech mimics (draws from?) Thucydides' account of Pericles' 430 B.C funeral oration at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War. Today is the anniversary of President Lincoln's delivery of his few "brief remarks" at the dedication of the new national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, only four or so months after the great Civil War battle there that emerged as "the...

in the town of Gettysburg, PA. President Lincoln delivers a short speech dedicating the new National Cemetery there.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should...

Today there are many Republicans who blame Trump for the de-Reaganization of the Republican Party and wistfully pine for the 1980s era of gentleman’s politics. This is, by the large, the main source of anxiety about Trump in some Republican quarters, and it is also the driving momentum of the so-called “Never Trump” movement. I came of age in the Reagan area, and I too prefer a more civil political climate. But that is not the America we live in now. Reagan’s policies and style were perfectly calibrated to deal with the specific problems and specific political environment of the...

When Americans assess Donald Trump, a president who in many ways has broken the mold, comparisons don’t come easily. But Abraham Lincoln? That’s the startling proposition illustrated in promotional posters for Dinesh D’Souza’s upcoming film “Death of a Nation,” which contends America is once again faced with an existential crisis. In an interview with WND, D’Souza explained he is not asserting that Trump is Lincoln. “We are saying there are situations that are eerily similar, the accusations against the two men are remarkably similar and Trump can take a page from the great emancipator,” D’Souza said. The filmmaker, known for...

In 1836, at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, a 28-year-old lawyer named Abraham Lincoln delivered one of his finest addresses. Lincoln condemned the sharp increase of mobs in America, which had exploded in number as the debate over slavery and regional animosity intensified. “Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times,” Lincoln said. Many of these mobs had turned violent and subverted the law. They were undermining free government. Calls for civility are sometimes vapid excuses to shut down political dissent. But what’s occurring now in America is not just heated debate at...

The bullet probably hit the Union soldier as he was fleeing. It may have struck his cartridge box first, which sent it tumbling through the muscle of his right buttock, broke his right leg and buried itself sideways in his thigh bone just below the hip. His buddies probably carried him as they retreated before the storm of Rebel gun and cannon fire. At the field hospital, the harried surgeons probably took a look at him and moved on to those less seriously wounded. After he died, he was laid in a shallow pit with a dead comrade and the...

This is a story of priorities and hypocrisy, brought to us by a president who saved the Union and was murdered for it, and a president whose policies and malevolence damaged both the nation and the world, and who is being rewarded for it. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation is in trouble. It is auctioning off non-Lincoln related artifacts in an effort to pay back a loan that is coming due. You see, the Lincoln Library doesn’t make a lot of money or attract enough major donors to operate. This is odd, considering President Lincoln is a “favorite” president...

The California Assembly discussed Thursday a bill that would replace Abraham Lincoln or George Washington’s birthday with International Socialist Workers’ Day as a paid holiday. California Democrat Assemblyman Miguel Santiago introduced Bill AB-3042, which would allow schools to replace Washington Day and Lincoln Day with Presidents’ Day and install an “International Workers’ Day” — conventionally known as “May Day” — as a second holiday. “I’m aghast that a bill like this would be able to get through committee,” California Republican Assemblyman Matthew Harper said to the Assembly. “Are we in competition to be the laughing stock of the United States?”...

On Monday morning, Twitter erupted after Kanye West posted a screenshot of a text exchange he had with a friend about Abraham Lincoln. Twitter was set ablaze after Kanye West posted a screenshot of a text exchange he had with a friend named ‘Steve.’ “Abe Lincoln freed and protected the slaves and he was Republican,” Steve said to Kanye in a text message. “Republicans were the ones who helped black people; Democrats protected the rights of the slave owners of the south,” Steve continued. Kanye West replied, “I’m gonna tweet this” Steve responded with, “Those are facts”

Read President Trump's comments about Candace Owens and Kanye West, two prominent black celebrities who have endorsed him. "Kanye looks and he sees black unemployment at the lowest it's been in the history of our country, OK? He sees Hispanic unemployment at the lowest it's been in the history of our country. He sees, by the way, female unemployment -- women unemployment the lowest it's been in now almost 19 years. He sees that stuff and he's smart. And he says you know what, Trump is doing a much better job than the Democrats did," Trump said about West. On...

While vacationing at Holden Beach in North Carolina last week, 42-year-old Brent Garlington spotted what is thought to be a wrecked Civil War-era steamer. Garlington, of Fayetteville, flew a drone over the Lockwood Folly Inlet, which is located between Holden Beach and Oak Island. The tide was low because of the full moon, Garlington told Fox News on Tuesday. This prompted him to take a walk on the beach sandbar and ultimately capture the footage using a drone. While Garlington didn’t discover the vessel, he believes "this is the first time it has been seen from this perspective." (snip) A...

Visitors to a small log cabin in Kentucky are right to ask: Is it true that Abraham Lincoln slept here? On the eve of Lincoln's 209th birthday tomorrow, Brook Silva-Braga has the answer... "What we're trying to do is authenticate when this cabin was made by using the tree rings in the logs," he replied. Some say our 16th president, born in these hills in 1809, spent some of his childhood in this cabin at Knob Creek. But did he?... So no, Abraham Lincoln did not sleep here in the Knob Creek cabin … or in the "symbolic cabin" at...

It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of the people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. ~ Lincoln February 12 is the anniversary of the birth of the 16th - and arguably the greatest - president of these United States, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). Born in Kentucky and raised in Illinois, Lincoln was largely self-educated and became a country lawyer in 1836, having been elected to the state legislature two years earlier. He had one term in the U.S. Congress (1847-1849) but failed (against Stephen A. Douglas)...

On April 22, 1856, the citizens of Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa, cheered as they watched three steam locomotives pull eight passenger cars safely across the newly completed Chicago and Rock Island railroad bridge over the Mississippi River. The first railroad bridge across the Mississippi was open for business. Now the people of eastern Iowa could reach New York City by rail in no more than forty-two hours. The construction and completion of this bridge came to symbolize the larger issues affecting transcontinental commerce and sectional interests. Backers of a railroad across the country were divided between those who...

Subverting the Electoral Process: In his Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln reminded Americans that they were uniquely privileged to have a new birth of freedom that was contingent on “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” That was then. What about now? Every week brings new revelations and details about a cabal in the federal government whose actions border on a conspiracy. The evidence suggests that specific high level officials in the Justice Department and the FBI colluded together to violate the law in unprecedented ways for the singular purpose of subverting the will of the people...

On this day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivers his famous Gettysburg address. Did you know that no one knows exactly where he gave the speech? And no one knows precisely what he said? Several different transcripts of the speech exist, each with slightly different phrasing. lincoln-11-19-3His speech wasn’t even supposed to be the main feature that day! Instead, a two-hour oration by a former Secretary of State, Edward Everett, was supposed to be the highlight. Lincoln’s two-minute speech would go down in history. Everett’s has been mostly forgotten. Perhaps Everett saw the writing on the wall? He wrote to the...