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=_Abraham Lincoln,[25] 1809-1865._=

“Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg,” November 19, 1883.

=_95._= OBLIGATION TO THE PATRIOT DEAD.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon 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 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 governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

[Footnote 25:  Born in Kentucky; a prominent lawyer and statesman of Illinois; was elected President of the United States in 1860; was eminent for his profound appreciation of ’the subsequent struggle, and for his patriotic appeals in behalf of the nation.  Assassinated April 13, 1865.]

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=_Charles Sumner, 1811-1874._= (Manual, p. 487.)

From the “Speech in the Senate on the Nebraska and Kansas Bill,” May 25, 1854.

=_96._= PROSPECTIVE RESULTS OF THE BILL.

Sir, the bill which you are now about to pass is at once the worst and the best bill on which Congress ever acted.  Yes, sir, worst and best at the same time.

It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery.  In a Christian land, and in an age of civilization, a time-honored statute of freedom is struck down, opening the way to all the countless woes and wrongs of human bondage.  Among the crimes of history, another is about to be recorded, which no tears can blot out, and which, in better days, will be read with universal shame.