XV

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, sixteenth President of the United States. Admitted to the bar in 1835; served in the Black Hawk War, 1832; Whig member of Illinois State Legislature, 1834-42; Whig member of Congress, 1847-49. In 1858 he held a series of joint discussions with Stephen A. Douglas, in which he took a pronounced stand against the institution of slavery. A staunch defender of liberty, lover of humanity and an avowed abolitionist, his election as President, 1860, was the signal for the secession of the Southern States. Issued the famous emancipation proclamation, 1863; re-elected President, 1864; assassinated, 1865, at the close of the Civil War, when occupied with plans for the reconstruction of the South. The selections which follow are from his speeches and public documents.

The man who will not investigate both sides of a question is dishonest.

The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats.

In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. Though I now sink out of view, I believe I have made some mark which will tell for the cause of liberty long after I am gone.

It is not much in the nature of man to be driven to anything; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own. business.

The authors of the Declaration of Independence meant it to be a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the paths of despotism.

I have always thought that all men should be free, but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others.

If there is anything that it is the duty of the whole people never to intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.

I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with or to jeopardize in any degree the common rights of the citizen.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

Friends, this thing (abolition) has been retarded long enough. The time has come when these sentiments should be uttered; and if it is decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to truth-let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right.

There is no reason in the world why the Negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas, he is not my equal in any respect, certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowments, but in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of any living

man.

All the political sentiments I entertain have drawn from the sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from this hall (Independence Hall). I have never had a feeling politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. The great principle of the Declaration was that sentiment which gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to all the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.

That is the real issue which will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time. The one is the common right of humanity, the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says "you toil and work and earn bread and I'll eat it."

Church and Ministers.—The United States Government must not undertake to run the churches. When an individual in a church, or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked.

I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by religous men who are certain they represent the Divine will I hope it will not be irreverent in me to say, that if it be probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.

Here are twenty-three ministers of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members of the churches, a very large majority of whom are against me.

All the powers of the earth seem rapidly combining against him. (the Negro). Mammon is after him,

theology of the day is fast joining in the cry.

and the

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.

Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are,

taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest

men.

If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the supreme court, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.

When a white man governs himself, that is self government. But when he governs himself and also governs some other man, that is worse than self government-that is despotism. What I do mean to say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

Labor and Capital.-Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things ought to belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others, without labor, have enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor as nearly as possible is a worthy object of any good government.

It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principles of popular government the rights of the people. itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power Monarchy of the people.

In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument

should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it, induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to do it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed. .. Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people.