Word: lincolnisms
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...Abraham Lincoln holographs appearing on the auction block these days are likely to be routine memos from the 16th President -- a postmaster's appointment or some such. Much rarer is a Lincoln paper in his own hand on a key political issue. Sotheby's in New York City announced that in December it will auction off just such a document -- a draft of the pivotal "house divided" speech of 1858. A portion of the text is inscribed across a 12-in. by 7-in. sheet of paper that had been hanging on a wall in the home of a descendant...
...address, delivered on June 16, when Lincoln was nominated as a senatorial candidate in Illinois to oppose Democrat Stephen Douglas, made headlines. What Lincoln said in Springfield -- that a nation half slave, half free was not permanently tenable -- proclaimed his no-compromise stand...
...handwriting is off the wall, it may bring as much as $500,000 at auction. It may also underscore how important it is to have everything in writing -- a reminder that might have spared Ronald Reagan some embarrassment. In his speech to the Republican National Convention, Reagan misattributed to Lincoln maxims actually written by a 20th century Presbyterian clergyman...
...worse in Wasp history than George Bush's inarticulateness, with slavery standing at the top of the list. The best defense of Waspdom is that it always included people who saw that slavery was wrong, and when it came to a fight, they won the war and (thanks to Lincoln) the argument. The way of the Wasp contained the correctives for its vices. It is the matrix of most of the good that America has done as well as the good that needs to be done...
Americans should take pride, not in empty formulas of tolerance and diversity, but in the historic content of their culture, in forms as homely as Benjamin Franklin's how-to-get-rich maxims, or as sublime as Lincoln's second Inaugural Address. There is no need to say to those who demur, "Love it or leave it." They have already left, for internal exile. If there are Americans who feel as alienated as the Amish, let them live like the Amish -- without harassment, but without subsidized proselytizing for their rejectionist world views. America has business -- noble business -- to attend...