"If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it."

"It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest."

~ Abraham Lincoln #Botd 1809

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, the country's greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis.

Lincoln succeeded in preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy. He is remembered as the martyr hero of the United States and he is consistently ranked as one of the greatest presidents in American history.

"Nations do not die from invasion; they die from internal rottenness."

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

~ Abraham Lincoln

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, ...

... and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"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."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; ...

... while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Those who are ready to sacrifice freedom for security ultimately will lose both."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Behind the cloud the sun is still shining."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"You must remember that some things legally right are not morally right."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Discipline is choosing between what you want now, and what you want most."

"Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality."

~ Abraham Lincoln

"You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica."
~ Abraham Lincoln

The farm site where Lincoln grew up in Spencer County, Indiana

"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."
~ Abraham Lincoln

Young Lincoln by Charles Keck at Senn Park, Chicago

Dred Scott was a slave whose master took him from a slave state to a free territory under the Missouri Compromise. After Scott was returned to the slave state he petitioned a federal court for his freedom. His petition was denied in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). ...

Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the decision wrote that blacks were not citizens and derived no rights from the Constitution... Lincoln argued the decision was at variance with the Declaration of Independence; ...

... Lincoln said that while the founding fathers did not believe all men equal in every respect, they believed all men were equal "in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".

First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln

The Peacemakers is an 1868 painting by George P.A. Healy. It depicts the historic March 27, 1865, strategy session by the Union high command on the steamer River Queen during the final days of the American Civil War. Since 1947, it has been in the White House collection.

Shown in the presidential booth of Ford's Theatre, from left to right, are assassin John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln, Clara Harris, and Henry Rathbone

The caskets containing Lincoln's body and the body of his son traveled for 3 weeks on the Lincoln Special funeral train. The train followed a circuitous route from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, stopping at many cities for memorials attended by hundreds of thousands.

Walt Whitman composed When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd to eulogize him, one of four poems he wrote about Lincoln. African Americans were especially moved; they had lost 'their Moses'. In a larger sense, the reaction was in response to the deaths of so many men in the war.