Lincoln ReLoaded
If our greatest President, Abraham Lincoln, who brought us united through our first great trial as a nation, could speak on our present discord today, this is perhaps what he might say:
Fellow Citizens of the United States of America.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the second year, since a policy was initiated to reduce Americans to tax servitude and penury, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of installing the principles of Liberty with the base conditions of Socialism.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half socialist 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.
Either the opponents of socialism will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South, East as well as West.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts the aim [of the traitors among us,] carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination -- piece of machinery so to speak -- compounded of the the Congressional Democrat Majority, and the election of Barack Obama. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, the evidence of design and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning....
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen, and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly matte the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different L pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, -- not omitting even scaffolding -- or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in -- in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that all understood one another from the beginning and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.....
Our cause [which is to reverse and eliminate this threat to the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness among free Americans,] then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends -- those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work -- who do care for the result.
[This November] the Republicans of the nation [must muster all their strength from all corners of the Republic.]
We do this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us.
Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we [must gather] from the four winds, and form and fight the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy.
Did [all our forbearers] brave all to falter now? -- now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail -- if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
Only slightly modified from Lincoln's House Divided Speech: Delivered on 16 June, 1858 at The Statehouse in Springfield, Illinois.
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