Prev | Current Page 321 | Next

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

"The Writings of Abraham Lincoln - Volume 1: 1832-1843"

What one of
us but can call to mind some relative, more promising in youth than all
his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity? He ever seems
to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel of death, commissioned to
slay, if not the first, the fairest born of every family. Shall he now
be arrested in his desolating career? In that arrest all can give aid
that will; and who shall be excused that can and will not? Far around as
human breath has ever blown he keeps our fathers, our brothers, our sons,
and our friends prostrate in the chains of moral death. To all the
living everywhere we cry, "Come sound the moral trump, that these may
rise and stand up an exceeding great army." "Come from the four winds, O
breath! and breathe upon these slain that they may live." If the
relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount
of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then
indeed will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen.
Of our political revolution of '76 we are all justly proud.


Pages:
309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333