SEVEN LINES FROM LINCOLN

Maybe you had to memorize “Four score and seven years ago”?  Maybe you’ve heard “of the people, by the people, for the people” somewhere.  But Lincoln had a few other words to say, including the most amazing sentence ever uttered by an American president.  (And yes, he wrote it.)

1.  “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

2.  “I don’t like that man.  I must get to know him better.”

3. When putting on his boots to go to his wedding, he was asked where he was going. He answered, “To hell, I reckon.”

4.  “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history.  We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves.”  

5.

6.  “As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.'  When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.'  When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty – to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

6. And finally, that sentence:  “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”