Posted on 02/12/2024 11:09:57 AM PST by Rummyfan
Today is the anniversary of the birth of America’s great or greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal.
In 1858 Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln’s losing campaign against Douglas that made him a figure of sufficient prominence that he could be the party’s 1860 presidential nominee.
At the convention of the Illinois Republican Party in June, Lincoln was the unanimous choice to run against Douglas. After declaring him their candidate late on the afternoon of June 16, the entire convention returned that evening to hear Lincoln speak. Accepting the convention’s nomination, Lincoln gave one of the most incendiary speeches in American history.
Lincoln electrified the convention, asserting that the institution of slavery had made the United States “a house divided against itself.” Slavery would either be extirpated or become lawful nationwide, Lincoln predicted, provocatively quoting scriptural authority to the effect that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Demonstrating how it “changed the course of history,” Harry Jaffa calls it “[t]he speech that changed the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
Remembering Mr. Boothe who got rid of the tyrant Lincoln for us all.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
One nation, under God.
Thanks Mr. Lincoln.
It’s a fascinating story, how Lincoln came to be nominated. Five years later he was a martyr and an idol.
Nobody could have dealt with the war in between, without later being regarded as an angel or a devil. It’s like a ghost battle, echoing down the ages.
The man was dealt a bad hand, he played it as best he could. He was lucky that only posterity judges him, and that the Founders and ancestors didn’t get to chime in too.
Used to be a holiday.
Lincoln’s birthday.
—
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 do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
You would have called Jackson a tyrant, he would have been far harsher than Lincoln, however the bad Whig parts of Lincoln would not have happened. Lincoln is overated.
At least Rex Harrison’s version fired back.
Police Squad.
I don’t know enough to have an informed opinion. I only know one
thing: Mr Lincoln’s army invaded my ancestor’s homeland.
He missed this part in the Declaration:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation....."
Lincoln started a war that killed 750,000 people directly, and millions indirectly. He completely transformed the relationship between the Federal government and the States, making it far more powerful than it was ever intended to be by the framers.
He never intended to abolish slavery. That was an afterthought and intended as a means of breaking the South's economic power more than any concern about the welfare of slaves.
He wanted black people to be removed from the nation, and contemplated and enacted several schemes to achieve that goal.
Thank you for posting this.
Lincoln certainly led the country during its most violently perilous time thus far.
Thankfully, there is much scholarship on Lincoln available to read and consider.
This is the sort of lie a conman tells. A little bit of truth, mixed with a very big lie.
"Four score and seven years ago.." refers to 1776. Specifically July 4, 1776, which is the day the Declaration of *INDEPENDENCE* was officially created.
While yes, the Declaration of *INDEPENDENCE* did contain the words "all men are created equal", the purpose of the document was not intended as a commentary on slavery, but instead about the *RIGHT* for states to be free of a government that no longer represented their interest.
Here we have Lincoln referring to a time in which 13 slave owning states declared *INDEPENDENCE* from a Union.
But he is presenting it as if they were speaking about slavery. This is the con-man's bait and switch.
No, "four score and seven years ago..." was *NOT* about slavery, it was about the rights of states to *LEAVE* a Union.
Isn't this the only thing you really need to know?
Which *HE* caused. Don't forget to point out that part.
Thanks for the Declaration of Independence.
When I was a teenager, our family drove down to Springfield from our Chicago suburb to see the log cabin where he lived. My dad was a big fan of Lincoln and wanted us to see it. Probably a replica, but a powerful experience anyway.
While yes, the Declaration of *INDEPENDENCE* did contain the words “all men are created equal”, the purpose of the document was not intended as a commentary on slavery, but instead about the *RIGHT* for states to be free of a government that no longer represented their interest.
One empire, under tyranny.
Not in this case. What *WE*, meaning modern people, interpret those words to mean is *NOT* what the representatives of 13 slave holding states interpreted them to mean.
Modern *WE* think they were referring to slaves, because that's what we have all been taught to think based on the adoration of Lincoln's speech in which he highlights those words, but 1776 Americans saw those words as referring to themselves, and very little thought was given that these words should apply to slaves.
Jefferson, may have, but most others and the people they represented saw them as referring to the white colonists who believed themselves to be second class subjects compared to the English.
So yeah, sometimes words mean what they say, but not in this case.
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