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Dear Editor,
Dale Carnegie, in 1932, wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln, titled “The Unknown Lincoln.” It was a short book, published by the Pocket Book publishing company. He describes Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as more than a speech - a divine expression of a rare soul exalted and made great by suffering.
Our nation started with the migration of people from western Europe to a new and unexplored land known by us as the Western Hemisphere.
Abraham Lincoln’s parents were included among the migrants that moved west from the original colonies. Almost always destitute and living off the parcels of land, they moved to several states and separate homesteads.
Dale Carnegie wrote that all he knew about Lincoln was that he had been born in a log cabin; had walked miles to borrow books and then read them all night, stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace; that he split rails; became a lawyer; told funny stories; was called “Honest Abe”; was elected President of the United States; wore a silk top hat; freed slaves; and was shot by Booth in a theatre in Washington; that he was aroused about Lincoln from articles he had read in the British Museum Library, and went to Illinois to write of Lincoln on the ground that Lincoln had dreamed and toiled.
Abraham Lincoln started business as a store clerk and read for the law to become a practicing attorney. On one of his trips to New Orleans, he witnessed slaves being sold, and he became a person opposed to slavery. Subsequent activities led into debates regarding the extension of slavery to Kansas and his convictions brought him to the attention of the new Republican party, which nominated him for President and he was elected in 1860, an anti slavery President.
For the benefit of some of your readers who may not be familiar with the background of Lincoln’s speech, let me remind then that some states desired to keep and expand the ownership of human slaves, and other states objected. Their intention was to abolish slavery in the United States by passage of laws. Upon the election of Lincoln, the slave states withdrew from the Union and armed conflict followed.
In 1863, General lee, the Commander of the Confederate States Army, was getting the best of the Union military, and in July 1863, he invaded the northern states with a large military force. In Pennsylvania, at a town named Gettysburg, the two armies met for battle. On the first two days of this battle, the Union Army had 20,000 casualties. On the third day, July 3 or 4, Lee attacked the remaining U.S. Army across an open area with about 15,000 men, led by General George Pickett, known as Pickett’s Charge. The Union artillery and infantry fought back and it was estimated that four-fifths of the Confederate troops were killed or wounded.
Dear Editor,
Dale Carnegie, in 1932, wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln, titled “The Unknown Lincoln.” It was a short book, published by the Pocket Book publishing company. He describes Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as more than a speech - a divine expression of a rare soul exalted and made great by suffering.
Our nation started with the migration of people from western Europe to a new and unexplored land known by us as the Western Hemisphere.
Abraham Lincoln’s parents were included among the migrants that moved west from the original colonies. Almost always destitute and living off the parcels of land, they moved to several states and separate homesteads.
Dale Carnegie wrote that all he knew about Lincoln was that he had been born in a log cabin; had walked miles to borrow books and then read them all night, stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace; that he split rails; became a lawyer; told funny stories; was called “Honest Abe”; was elected President of the United States; wore a silk top hat; freed slaves; and was shot by Booth in a theatre in Washington; that he was aroused about Lincoln from articles he had read in the British Museum Library, and went to Illinois to write of Lincoln on the ground that Lincoln had dreamed and toiled.
Abraham Lincoln started business as a store clerk and read for the law to become a practicing attorney. On one of his trips to New Orleans, he witnessed slaves being sold, and he became a person opposed to slavery. Subsequent activities led into debates regarding the extension of slavery to Kansas and his convictions brought him to the attention of the new Republican party, which nominated him for President and he was elected in 1860, an anti slavery President.
For the benefit of some of your readers who may not be familiar with the background of Lincoln’s speech, let me remind then that some states desired to keep and expand the ownership of human slaves, and other states objected. Their intention was to abolish slavery in the United States by passage of laws. Upon the election of Lincoln, the slave states withdrew from the Union and armed conflict followed.
In 1863, General lee, the Commander of the Confederate States Army, was getting the best of the Union military, and in July 1863, he invaded the northern states with a large military force. In Pennsylvania, at a town named Gettysburg, the two armies met for battle. On the first two days of this battle, the Union Army had 20,000 casualties. On the third day, July 3 or 4, Lee attacked the remaining U.S. Army across an open area with about 15,000 men, led by General George Pickett, known as Pickett’s Charge. The Union artillery and infantry fought back and it was estimated that four-fifths of the Confederate troops were killed or wounded.
It was a beginning of the end for the Confederates as Lee started the return of his army to the Potomac River, and south to Virginia, a Confederate state.
It took several months to bury the dead in the new military cemetery at Gettysburg, and it was at the dedication of that cemetery that fall, that President Lincoln was asked to “make a few appropriate remarks.”
Those remarks are as follows:
“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 cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot 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 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.”
President Lincoln’s thinking as to whether this nation, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, could long endure, was central to his message in the address.
The importance of Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts, barely 70 years after George Washington and the American Colonist began this new nation, are of special importance to the descendants of American Colonist now in the year 2012.
The weakness of human nature has extended the practice of inequality between our people. Slavery, by color, has been terminated, but controlled inequality of economic differences has taken its place.
The Kings have been succeeded by economic Barons.
The servants have been succeeded by hourly laborers.
Wealth, piled high as the moon, is worth nothing without a competent and prosperous working force.
Working people, capable of building computers and space ships, can produce nothing without the investment of capital and confidence in their own judgement.
The success of each depends on the success of the other, but neither the Barons nor the prosperous working force can be counted as a success until all Americans are included in the resolution of equality and freedom. We must not blind our discussions to equal needs for living from the physical and mental disabled. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution anticipated the need to form a more perfect union, provided a promotion of our general welfare and the blessings of Liberty to themselves and America’s succeeding generations.
In our lifetime, we can fulfill the dedication of Abraham Lincoln that neither color nor economic differences, shall separate us from the brotherhood we have been allowed; but it will require a new direction for our pride, and a new measuring stick for our worth on earth. Anything less is a rejection of the teachings to our children at every Sunday School class, every Sunday morning in America.
– Robert M. Green, El Dorado
