[FDRfollower]

To honor our martyred leader, emancipator, shakespherean actor, and all around liberal whose birthday was a couple of days ago, please post your favorite speech, quote, quip, story, etc.

In honor of Black history month also, which we can celebrate thanks to Lincoln, I would like to recite Paul Laurence Dunbars poem Lincoln. ahem

Lincoln

Hurt was the nation with a mighty wound,
And all her ways were filled with clam'rous sound.
Wailed loud the South with unremitting grief,
And wept the North that could not find relief.
Then madness joined it's harshest tone to strife:
A minor note swelled in the song of life.
Till, stirring with the love that filled his breast,
But still, unflinching at the right's behest,
Grave Lincoln came, strong handed, from afar,
The mighty Homer of the lyre of war.
'T was he who bade the raging tempest cease,
Wrenched from his harp the harmony of peace,
Muted the strings, that made the discord, --Wrong,
And gave his spirit up in thund'rous song.
Oh mighty Master of the mighty lyre,
Earth heard and trembled at thy strains of fire:
Earth learned of thee what Heav'n already knew,
And wrote thee down among her treasured few.

[Jane of Arc]

Sorry to do an 'obvious Lincoln', but this is too damn poignant and applicable to today not to post.


The Gettysburg Address


Abraham Lincoln

July 13, 1863


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it 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 can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on.

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 here gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

[BenDover]

Great thread! And so appropriate. Without question, my favorite Lincoln quote is this one:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

[FDRfollower]

Thank you both. I'm glad you're getting in the spirit of the thing. Here's mine. I find it amusing, that he seems to know more about the bible, and behaved more christian, without going to church. The opposite of our current "Republican" president. He knows more about the economy, than "economists" with PHD's.

Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions April 6, 1858,

All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner.

The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptabilities, are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.

In the beginning, the mine was unopened, and the miner stood naked, and knowledgeless, upon it.

Fishes, birds, beasts, and creeping things, are not miners, but feeders and lodgers, merely. Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon refered the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence.

Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions. His first important discovery was the fact that he was naked; and his first invention was the fig-leaf-apron. This simple article -- the apron -- made of leaves, seems to have been the origin of clothing -- the one thing for which nearly half of the toil and care of the human race has ever since been expended. The most important improvement ever made in connection with clothing, was the invention of spinning and weaving. The spinning jenny, and power-loom, invented in modern times, though great improvements, do not, as inventions, rank with the ancient arts of spinning and weaving. Spinning and weaving brought into the department of clothing such abundance and variety of material. Wool, the hair of several species of animals, hemp, flax, cotten, silk, and perhaps other articles, were all suited to it, affording garments not only adapted to wet and dry, heat and cold, but also susceptable of high degrees of ornamental finish. Exactly when, or where, spinning and weaving originated is not known. At the first interview of the Almighty with Adam and Eve, after the fall, He made "coats of skins, and clothed them" Gen: 3-21.

The Bible makes no other alusion to clothing, before the flood. Soon after the deluge Noah's two sons covered him with a garment; but of what material the garment was made is not mentioned. Gen. 9-23.

Abraham mentions "thread" in such connection as to indicate that spinning and weaving were in use in his day -- Gen. 14.23 -- and soon after, reference to the art is frequently made. "Linen breeches, ["] are mentioned, -- Exod. 28.42 -- and it is said "all the women that were wise hearted, did spin with their hands" (35-25) and, "all the women whose hearts stirred them up in wisdom, spun goat's hair" (35-26). The work of the "weaver" is mentioned -- (35-35). In the book of Job, a very old book, date not exactly known, the "weavers shuttle" is mentioned.

The above mention of "thread" by Abraham is the oldest recorded alusion to spinning and weaving; and it was made about two thousand years after the creation of man, and now, near four thousand years ago. Profane authors think these arts originated in Egypt; and this is not contradicted, or made improbable, by any thing in the Bible; for the alusion of Abraham, mentioned, was not made until after he had sojourned in Egypt.

Being that the speech is too long for the site, the rest you can read at this link clickthis (http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/discoveries.htm)