Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: LS
In Lincoln’s case the evidence isn’t there.

You should go back and read some of Lincoln's speeches from 1858. He spoke with great moral cogency and power. So much so that it cost him the Illinois U.S. Senate seat to Stephen A. Douglas...But of course ultimately won him the presidency in 1860.

Sorry. Donald Trump doesn't possess any of that. He gets on the stump and rambles around for an hour about himself and how great he is.

Here's small example for you:

------

"These communities [the Fathers of the Republic], by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

"This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures.

"Yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages.

"Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

"Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me — take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever — but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity — the Declaration of American Independence."

-- Abraham Lincoln, speech in Lewiston, Illinois, August 17, 1858, four days before his first historic debate with Stephen A. Douglas, Printed in the Chicago Press and Tribune.

-----

113 posted on 09/01/2015 7:38:02 PM PDT by EternalVigilance (Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cure.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 110 | View Replies ]


To: EternalVigilance
I have not only read Lincoln's speeches, I have written about them extensively. At issue was your claim that Lincoln had humbled himself and confessed his sins etc prior to becoming pres.

Most L scholars doubt that he ever became a Christian---I don't--but it was Lincoln himself who said he did not become a believer til 1863. For some time he was a Christian basher, writing a virulent anti-Christian tract at one time. You might want to see Steven Mansfield's "Lincoln s Battle With God" or Guelzo' "Abraham Lincolnn, Redeemer President.

Point is, Trump claims to be a Christian (Lincoln didn't) and goes to church (Lincoln paid for a pew but rarely attended). So before you judge, you would be guilty of calling BOTH men liars.

117 posted on 09/02/2015 3:50:15 AM PDT by LS ("Castles Made of Sand, Fall in the Sea . . . Eventually" (Hendrix))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 113 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson