Mortar lysed as it was on november 19, 1863 at gettysburg, president ia, there, lincoln made his most celebrated reference to the declaration of independence. , everyon a time schoolboy come every schoolgirl, would have memorized 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 the declaration of independence established the founding principles of the american republic. The document itself written by thomas jefferson, edited and approved by the second continental conga spirit peter to printisked his life this document in South Carolina in 1776. It is this very same document that mr. Lincoln revered throughout his life. True that he also made the declaration of independence the centerpiece of his Political Campaign for the senate and for the presidency. Was, when the story of lincoln made my first memory, i learned much, much letter from a study in regional documents themselves that it was in 1854 that the struggle for the equality principle of the declaration of independence came to preoccupy the great man. That add to the day of his 1854 was the year of mr. Lincolns extraordinary antislavery speech of october 16 at p oreo, illinois, after passage of the implicitly actslavery kansas, nebraska of 1854, mr. Lincoln turned with a single mind to the prohibition of the spread of slavery in america. Buggyt time, by horse and , sometimes in the saddle, lincoln ranged throughout the eight judicial districts of illinois. Land. Ngept for bidding a judicial circuit as large as the state of connecticut. Heading homeward in early 1854, lincoln decided to do Historical Research on the slavery issue. Intensive research and you and the original documents at the springfield, Illinois State library. There in the archives in the thee library, he mastered historical evidence, the documentary evidence of the founding of america. And especially the relationship of the american founding to the history of american slavery. Now it was only a few months a that mr. Lincoln mobilized this documentary evidence in order to indict the proslavery senior senator of illinois, and americas most , democratitician Stephen A Douglas. Is there on the portico of the ,300ia courthouse in 17 words, lincoln delivered as it would ever be known as the eech. Peoria sp a threehour and 10 minute argument to repeal the kansas, nebraska act and to justify further congressional prohibition of the extension of slavery in america. Days in 1865, speech informed all of lincolns great speeches and writings. Mr. Lincolns reputation isldwide, i believe it insufficiently well known that mr. Lincoln was almost entirely with fewer than 12 months of formal schooling. In the place at this schooling, he applied from boyhood a very effective, simple principle to gain his end. Work,mr. Lincoln work, work is the main thing, he said. This54 at peoria, selftaught Appellate Court litigator, at that time a private citizen, could never imagine what awaited him in the future. Only seven years had passed by when, in 1861, president lincoln knew that he was facetoface with americas greatest crisis since the founding. It was in 1861 that he made clear to all, both north and south, that he had sworn an oath on the bible at his inauguration to preserve the union. In his words, an oath registered in heaven. In order to fulfill that oath after the confederates made war on the union at fort sumter in april 1861, president lincoln did accept work. After quarter years of battle and rivers of blood, history would vindicate not only the literary and retorts as rhetorical genius of president lincoln, but even more so, military, moral, and political. Enius for the union had been restored, slavery abolished, these victories were achieved not by chance that from ultimately president lincolns remarkable leadership, his resilient character, his uncannily good judgment. As president , mr. Lincoln went almost, every day, draw one redline after another. When a crucial issue hung in the balance, he ruled decisively, even harshly. Seldom is his fundamental logic to act against slavery so well set forth as in a speech fragment believed to have been written, of course, by hams of to between 1857 and 1859. The right of a black slave to the fruit of his own labor was made so claimed by our good father in heaven that all can understand it, even down to brutes and creeping insects, the defend theriously fruit of his labor. So plain that no one high or low ever does mistake it, except in a selfish way. For although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself. President lincolns keen sense of justice and honor, his determination to in the minute the illegal slave trade, which occasionally tromped his wellknown compassion. February 1862, president lincoln signed order to delay the execution of a convicted slave , ader, Nathaniel Gordon powerful and passionate lobby pressed lincoln to overturn what would be the first Death Penalty applied to any illegal slave trader. In fact, the Death Penalty was the prescribed punishment. It had to be done. I cannot help him i would personally prefer to let this man lived in confinement and let him meditate on his deeds. Yet, in the name of justice, it is the majesty of the law. At one case, at least one specific instance of a professional slave trader, a northern white man, give an exact penalty of death because the incalculable number of he and his kind conflicted among amid the horror of a sea voyage from africa. It was fewer than seven months after captain gordon met his fate that president reagan issued the giraffe emancipation proclamation. The giraffe. He gave Confederate States 100 days to renounce rebellion. Emancipation day would be january 1, 1863, when the commanderinchief would issue the final emancipation proclamation at the meeting of the cabinet on september 22, shortly after the battle of antietam. President lincoln announced to the cabinet his decision. Secretary of the navy, and and wells, recorded lincolns words in the cabinet. Vow, an had made a covenant that if god gave us a victory in the approaching battle, he would consider and indication of divine will and that it was his duty to move forward to the cause of emancipation. Promise. And emancipation proclamation was issued on january 1, 1863. Almost more importantly thereafter, the union army, moving southward, became the soul of abolition, carrying the emancipation proclamation into the heart of slave territory. As president lincoln wrote the proclamation was an act of justice warranted by the constitution upon military necessity. According to the great black abolitionist Frederick Douglass who knew lincoln and studied him, emancipation proclamation bolt from the sky, an answer to the prayers of inspiring an awe event on the road to black freedom. So it was on emancipation that lincoln spoke out boldly, but as his colleagues knew, mr. Lincoln could be very catheter and very taciturn, even as his heart and her shutmouth. In a short but cryptic note to the secretary of war in may of 1862, mr. Lincoln wrote that a kentucky politician wishes 500 arms for reasons which he will explain to you, unless you know some strong objection, please let him have them. Disclosed mucht less than he actually knew. Discreetly authorized by the president himself, these arms were smuggled into kentucky for union loyalists. In kentucky, a slaveowning state. Arms needing to hold kentucky in the union. It was then that president lincoln was said to have remarked i should like to have god on my side, but i must have an techie. I must have kentucky. [laughter] i like it, too. We know also president lincoln comes down in history as a man of mercy, especially with enlisted soldier boys. When First Principles were at stake, he could be stern and unyielding. After antietam, union major john key suggested that the rebel confederates had not been pursued at antietam because it would have endangered slavery in the south. President lincoln [inaudible] my view, it in for anyy inadmissible gentleman holding a military commission from the United States of america to utter such sentiments as major key is reported to have done. Therefore, let major john key be dismissed from the United States army permanently. Begged to be reinstated, but mr. Lincoln rejected the request. Emphasizing, he bore major key no personal ill will, but dismiss you as an example and a warning to those Union Officers who do not understand that the Confederate Army must be destroyed. Subduedhern rebellion and the union restored. Contrary to an idiosyncratic academic interpretation that mr. Lincoln was a passive personality, the primary documents, the facts, the witnesses, show him to be a man of action, decisive and direct, generally subtle, acting boldly when confident, he could turn the event. When politicians start to cross him, mr. Lincoln did not hesitate to defend himself, often aggressively. For example, summer of 1868, mr. Lincoln learned that john j crittenden, the nationally respected senator from illinois was lincoln knew considering an endorsement of mr. Lincolns rival, Stephen A Douglas. Nstead of Abraham Lincoln so lincoln sent him a personal letter. He renounced any selfserving intention for crittendens endorsement of himself, but he he advised the famous senator, very much his would better be handsoff. As his contemporaries observed, lincoln was an ambitious man. William herndon, his law partner of 16 years, described lincolns a little engine which knew no rest. A speech fragment in lincolns own hands, written in july 1858, confirms his high ambition and his integrity. Anhave never professed indifference to the honors of official station, and were i to do so now, i should only make myself ridiculous. Yet, i have never failed do not fail to remember that in the republican cause, there is a higher aim than that of mere office. 1858 was them in prohibition of the extension of slavery in all of america. Two years later, 1860 one he became the dark horse republican candidate for president. Lincoln then defeated senator douglas for the presidency, his Third Campaign against senator douglas. But now his higher aim would be tried in the brutal courtroom of civil war. Emphasized that president lincoln believed that the pick yearly or institute the peculiar institution of black slavery, as it was known him a present at the creation of the american republic, was a mortal threat to the american experiment in liberty and democracy. A Democratic Political experiment which, at that time, and habited almost an entire world of monarchies, dictatorships, and theocracies. But lincoln knew from deep study of the actual documents of the american founding that the Constitutional Union of 1789 could only have been consummated if the founders accepted the southern states. With slavery. But by 1854, the growing power of the slave states seemed to command the future of the union. By commandeering the future of ,he New Territories for slavery if new slave states could be carved out of the new territory, this could create a permanent slave power majority in congress. And so it was that during the 1850s, lincoln in every speech eric lee challenged the legitimacy of slavery in america and in the New Territories. Showing, as he did, in 1860, at cooper union that the founders intended the american territories to be free of slavery, putting slavery in the course of ultimate extinction. In june of 1858, lincoln delivered the unforgettable house divided speech whereby he cast his law unequivocally with the more antislavery republicans. You know the unforgettable lines a house divided against stand, inot believe this government cannot endure permanently and have slaves, and i express this a year ago. Of course, lincoln did not come in 1858, note that civil war was a mere three years in the future , but when it came, victory would not be moved him. War, he had a will to win, and he urged it upon his party and upon his generals. On june 15 and 18 six to four, mr. Lincoln telegraphed general grant as the army of the potomac , closed in on generally general lee at richmond. The telegram i have just read your dispatch of 1 00 p. M. Yesterday. I began to see it, your will succeed. The president deeply respected general grant and his will to win, because grant understood the inflexible word must. In his very last public address on april 11, 1865, on the eve of add, victory, and i may fascination, almost in the manner of a shakespearean aside, president lincoln revealed the objective moral code guiding his own conduct. May, mustt principles be inflexible. President lincoln was no moral relativist. Despite so little schooling, his extraordinary autodidact was a man of profound religious historical him and intellectual. Nsight magisterial english flowed from his pen as naturally as the Mighty Mississippi river runs, as he said, to the sea. His simple and elegant anglosaxon prose avoids the latinate of the academy. Just as arguments against slavery evoke the First Principles of the objective moral order. Leading, as lincoln did, that it can never be a right to do wrong. We see this humane attitude in the president s classical freemarket philosophy. He wrote that the fullbodied value of the working mans way must be seriously considered in the making of national policy. Indeed, his Economic Policy was the robust successor to the nationalist Economic Program of , thender hamilton extraordinary first secretary of the treasury of the United States. Thus also did mr. Lincoln endorsed senator henry clays american system, and economic philosophy inherited from hamilton which embrace the positive use of government power to enhance the freemarket in ordery public works to increase Economic Opportunity nationwide, to integrate a great nation, to enhance life and success for people from all walks of life. , the scope, the actions mr. Lincolns personality, his ambition, his intellect should lay to rest that mr. Lincoln was a passive observer. To whom Amazing Things just seem to happen. Or officer James Mcpherson of tongueincheek, gives this idea of lincolns passivity, asking a rhetorical question did lincoln really believe that it was god and not himself who ordained the attempt in 1861 at fort sumter, the decision to issue an emancipation proclamation, the decision to make grant general and chief . Perhaps so, but i prefer to give lincoln some of the credit for this and other accomplishments. With that, i am reminded of the story of confederal jennet ticket who, when asked the reason for general Robert E Lees route on the battlefield tt gettysburg, general picket is said to have answered, i think the union army had something to do with it. Some academics, i believe, confused the city with the mature lincolns lack of intellectual pretension and bully bluster. For example, lincolns shrewd and modest a simulation when he said he did not control events but was controlled by them suggests not passivity but a disciplined ego among national leaders. Controle virtue of ego with the very essence of mr. Lincolns success. Men,de him master of master of ideas, above all, master of himself. The truth is that Abraham Lincoln emerges from the original document from the events themselves as a man of ideas who made american politics not only a struggle for personal power, but also a battle of First Principles. As the commander in chief in war, he showed us the character, the skill, and the persistence of a great warlord. In defeat, affiants. In victory, magnanimity. Prime minister Winston Churchill , four score years into the future. In 1864 with the outcome of the war still uncertain, president president ligon explained his philosophy to ohio soldiers visiting the white house. He suggested war itself was a struggle to create an open field and a fair chance for your andstry enterprise intelligence that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life. Lincolns equality was inequality of opportunity. In a. D. 57 at springfield, he 1857 atd in springfield, he explained in the founding document. I think the authors of the declaration intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respect they did consider all men created equal. Equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of. Ppiness ligons economic philosophy was patienton his confidence in the ultimate justice of the american people. There is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired labor being fixed to that condition to life. The prudent and he was beginner in the world waivers for wages a while and saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account for while, and at late, hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and energy and progress and improvement of condition to all. Whereof he knew spoke. Born poor, lincoln was himself of trulythe greatest selfmade man. His quintessential american principles of selfreliance, decency, opportunity, and enterprise defined at the colorblind American Dream of Martin Luther king. Of 1860, i want every man to have the chance, and i believe a black man is entitled. It a brilliant black abolitionist, for a group does Frederick Douglass, said president lincoln was the first great men that i talked with in the United States freely who i