Today marks the 189th anniversary of the birth of America’s 16th President. As a libertarian, I am sometimes of two minds about Lincoln. On the one hand, he led the nation in a Civil War the end result of which was a massive expansion of the power of the Federal Government over the states, On the other, he recognized when many others didn’t that preserving the Union was essential to preserving American freedom and that human slavery was an evil that should not be permitted to expand into the Western Territories.
For better or worse, though, he is deservedly ranked with Washington and FDR as one of America’s great Presidents. And I can’t think of a better way to mark the anniversary of his birth, than with what is clearly one of the greatest speeches in American history:
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.
