I have zero interest in anything the current occupant of the White House may say this evening. But I do enjoy certain passages about the Declaration of Independence and democracy from others who have lived and worked there. Thought I'd share a few. 1/
First up, Abraham Lincoln and his July 10, 1858 Speech at Chicago, Illinois, sometimes referred to as "The Electric Cord" speech. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/speech-at-chicago-illinois/ Lincoln was campaigning against Stephen Douglas, to become the Senator from Illinois. His speech is lengthy and worth reading in full, though in places his less admirable prejudices are evident. It isn't until close to the end that he takes up the point and purpose of "4th of July gatherings". 2/
I'm going to quote at length this part of Lincoln's speech.
"We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity ... 3/
"... we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. ... 4/
"We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. ... 5/
"But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. ... 6/
"If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” ... 7/
"... and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. ... 8/
"That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world." 9/9
(end of thread quoting Abraham Lincoln's Speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858, https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/speech-at-chicago-illinois/)
@heidilifeldman Stripped of all the verbosity, that seems to amount to Abraham Lincoln claiming deep and abiding kinship with the land-holders and slave-owners who shook off the old empire to found a new empire of genocide and slavery and imperial conquest marketed as freedom.
Stirring stuff, but deeply dangerous in its mendacity.
@2legged @heidilifeldman I'm a student of history. While Abraham Lincoln was by no means perfect, he did have genuine qualms with slavery. Of course he still would not accept a black man as his equal but he could not countenance slavery
@housepanther Sure, Abe made his name by taking a turn and opposing slavery,
But the nation whose founders Abe praised was built on colonisation, genocide, slavery and white gun violence, which was mendaciously marketed as "freedom". Where's the virtue in that mendacity?
Thank you Heidi. Really needed that tonight.