February 1 is National Freedom Day in the U.S., a time to celebrate the freedoms we enjoy in America. On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed the resolution proposing the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to outlaw slavery, and the states ratified it by the end of the year.
Here are some of Lincoln's thoughts on freedom:
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.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for
themselves.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.
This expresses my idea of democracy.
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the
power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and
form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable—a most sacred
right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
I have always thought that all men should be free; but
if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire for themselves,
and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for
slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what
we ought.
And then, the negro being doomed, and damned, and
forgotten, to everlasting bondage, is the white man quite certain that the
tyrant demon will not turn upon him too?
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to
the free— honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly
save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
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.
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