Abraham Lincoln

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” — Abraham Lincoln

Yesterday was the 201st anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, one of the nation’s greatest presidents.

Abraham Lincoln

16th President of the United States, 1809 - 1865

Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a log cabin in Hardin County (now LaRue County), Kentucky. He rose from humble origins and less than a year of formal education to become the 16th President of the United States, and one of the great men of American history.

Lincoln was elected President on November 6, 1860, and led the United States through the nation’s greatest crisis, the Civil War (1861-1865). He is credited with saving the Union from disintegration and eliminating slavery in America.

On the evening of April 14, 1865 Lincoln was assassinated as he watched a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. He was the first American President to be assassinated. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks as his funeral train moved him from Washington to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois.

On June 1, 1865, Senator Charles Sumner commented on what is now considered the most famous speech by President Abraham Lincoln. In his eulogy on the slain president, he called it a "monumental act." He said Lincoln was mistaken that "the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here." Rather, the Bostonian remarked, "The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech."


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 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.

God Bless The United States of America
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Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The text above is from the so-called "Bliss Copy," one of several versions that Lincoln wrote, and believed to be the final version. For additional versions, you may search The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln through the courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Association.