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One of the first of the many, many dates I was required to memorize way back in grade school was Lincoln's Birthday (today) and surprisingly enough I have never forgotten it.
One of the most recent quotes attributed to Mr. Lincoln that I have read (and am now attempting to memorize) is: "We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
To me, that quotation is one of the most enduring pieces of wisdom in existence, and is of monumental importance especially in the current governmental atmosphere of seemingly casual, somewhat scornful, payment of lip-service to the constitution. Mr. Lincoln's words can well bear repeating:
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Born On This Day
Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States
(February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865)
The Gettysburg Address
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 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 on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, 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 it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 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, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
So! "The world will little note, nor long remember...."
Have we indeed forgotten?
It sometimes seems so.
Note:
Many of the volumes of Abraham Lincoln's writing are available FREE for downloading in Kindle editions from Amazon.com.
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America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
--Abraham Lincoln
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