In 1861, Lincoln Faced Secessionist Southern Democrats and Civil War and Won at the Cost of His Life; In 2019, Trump Faces Progressive-Socialist Democrats and Anarchy

FEBRUARY 12 IS ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY. And as we celebrate the man who secured the Union and freed Black Americans from slavery, we should also remember his words of wisdom and warning for the Union he saved. • • • LINCOLN'S LYCEUM ADDRESS. Lincoln's Lyceum Address was about Mob Rule and the Rule of Law. Abraham Lincoln, born on February 12, 1809, was struck down in his 56th year, after saving the American constitutional Union and earning his place as the most beloved and greatest of America's Presidents. The Lyceum Address, one of Lincoln's earliest published speeches, is studied because it points to many of his later public policies. • Lincoln was 28 -- halfway through his life -- when he gave the speech. He had recently moved from a frontier village to Springfield, Illinois. William Herndon, who would become Lincoln's law partner in 1844, wrote of the event : "We had a society in Springfield, which contained and commanded all the culture and talent of the place....its meetings were public, and reflected great redit on the community....The speech was brought out by the burning in St. Louis a few weeks before, by a mob, of a negro. Lincoln took this incident as a sort of text for his remarks....The address was published...and created for the young orator a reputation...beyond the limits of the locality in which he lived." • To honor Lincoln -- and reflect on America's current situation -- here is an excerpt from "The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions" : Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838 : "We, the American People, find...ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth....under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any...a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land;...'tis ours only, to transmit to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform. How then shall we perform it? -- At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?...Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide....There is...something of ill-omen amongst us....the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the everyday news....They have pervaded the country....by the operation of this mobocractic spirit...now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government...may effectually be broken down and destroyed -- I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever...the vicious portion of the population shall be permitted to gather in bands...and burn churches, ravage and rob provision- stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure...depend on it, this Government cannot last....men of sufficient talent and ambition will...seize the opportunity...and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world." • The February 12, 1861, edition of the Illinois State Journal, a Springfield newspaper noted, "It was a most impressive scene. We have known Mr. Lincoln for many years; we have heard him speak upon a hundred different occasions; but we never saw him so profoundly affected, nor did he ever utter an address, which seemed to us as full of simple and touching eloquence, so exactly adopted to the occasion, so worthy of the man and the hour. Although it was raining fast when he began to speak, every hat was lifted, and every head bent forward to catch the last words of the departing chief. When he said, with the earnestness of a sudden inspiration of feeling, that with God's help he should not fail, there was an uncontrollable burst of applause. At precisely eight o'clock, city time, the train moved off, bearing our honored townsman, our noble chief, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, to the scenes of his future labors, and, as we firmly believe, of his glorious triumph. God bless honest ABRAHAM LINCOLN!" • • • LINCOLN AND THE SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS. After the election of Abraham Lincoln, Southern Democrats led the charge to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. The Union Congress was dominated by Republicans, save for Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the only Senator from a state in rebellion to reject secession. By 1860, Southern politics was dominated by the idea of states’ rights in the context of slavery to support the South’s agricultural economy, and slave-heavy, cotton-producing agricultural states embraced secession as the solution. The election of Abraham Lincoln was labeled an act of war by some Southern Democrat politicians, who predicted armies would come to seize slaves and force white women to marry black men. Secession meetings and assemblies started to appear across the South. As secession began to seem more likely, so did war. Altercations with Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and Fort Pickens, Florida, escalated. Southern politicians began to procure weaponry, and some secessionists even proposed kidnapping Lincoln. By February 1861, seven Southern states had seceded. On February 4, 1861, representatives from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana met in Montgomery, Alabama, with representatives from Texas arriving later, to form the Confederate States of America. Former secretary of war, military man and then-Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis was elected Confederate president. Ex-Georgia governor, congressman and former anti-secessionist Alexander H. Stephens became vice-president of the Confederate States of America. • • • LINCOLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th President of the United States. In his inauguration speech, Lincoln extended an olive branch to the South, but also made it clear that he intended to enforce federal laws in the states that seceded. This was not an idle threat. Since Lincoln’s election in November 1860, seven states had left the Union. In the process, some of those states seized federal properties such as armories and forts. By the time Lincoln arrived in Washington, DC, for his inauguration, the possibility of war was real. Lincoln took a cautious approach in his remarks, and made no specific threats against the Southern states. As a result, he had some flexibility in trying to keep the states of the upper South–North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware -- in the Union. In his inaugural address, Lincoln promised not to interfere with the institution of slavery where it existed, and pledged to suspend the activities of the federal government temporarily in areas of hostility. However, he also took a firm stance against secession and the seizure of federal property. He also reminded the nation of the unique status of the Union : "It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our National Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the Government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted. I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. Again : If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it -- break it, so to speak -- but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union....That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak? Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from, will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?....'The Constitution does not expressly say.' From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority....Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left....This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse." Lincoln closed his remarks with an eloquent reminder of the nation’s common heritage : “In your hand, my fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it....We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 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.” • Six weeks after Lincoln's remarkably conciliatory First Inaugural Address, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, the Union troops surrendered, and the Civil War began. • • • 1861 WAS 158 YEARS AGO, AND TODAY? In the last few weeks, the Progressive Left in the United States has removed its moderate mask to show its true socialist colors as they cheer laws that allow for the killing of babies already born and born alive, giving the mother the right of a thumbs up or thumbs down like a Roman emperor. Almost every one of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates supports the New Green Deal proposed by a freshman congresswoman, a Deal so expensive that economists and financial experts simply cannot calculate its cost, saying only "Trillions!!" Progressive-socialist Democrat states led by California are sheltering illegal aliens and refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement even in the cases of criminal acts by illegals, including murder. Progressive federal judges are handing down constitutionally questionable nationwide stay orders that prevent the legitimate President from carrying out an agenda that was approved by a majority of American voters. The ProgDem minority in the Senate and the newly elected ProgDem House majority refuse to discuss, let alone grant, the legitimate President's requests for funds to secure US borders in the face of an increasing threat of illegal alien entry that is estimated to be approximately 1 Million in 2019. This same ProgDem congressional minority has threatened impeachment if the legitimate President uses his constitutional authority to manage his own executive agencies such as the FBI and DOJ. • It is no exaggeration to say that the Union is in trouble. • • • 2016 -- DONALD TRUMP SPEAKS OUT. In his ACCEPTANCE SPEECH before the Republican National Convention in July 2016, presidential nominee Donald Trump said : "My message is that things have to change -- and they have to change right now. Every day I wake up determined to deliver for the people I have met all across this nation that have been neglected, ignored, and abandoned. I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country. People who work hard but no longer have a voice. I AM YOUR VOICE. I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal agendas before the national good. I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government incompetence, no sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens. When innocent people suffer, because our political system lacks the will, or the courage, or the basic decency to enforce our laws -- or worse still, has sold out to some corporate lobbyist for cash -- I am not able to look the other way....Remember : all of the people telling you that you can’t have the country you want, are the same people telling you that I wouldn’t be standing here tonight. No longer can we rely on those elites in media, and politics, who will say anything to keep a rigged system in place. Instead, we must choose to Believe In America. History is watching us now. It’s waiting to see if we will rise to the occasion, and if we will show the whole world that America is still free and independent and strong....My pledge reads : “I’M WITH YOU – THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.” I am your voice. So to every parent who dreams for their child, and every child who dreams for their future, I say these words to you tonight : I’m With You, and I will fight for you, and I will win for you. To all Americans tonight, in all our cities and towns, I make this promise : We Will Make America Strong Again. We Will Make America Proud Again. We Will Make America Safe Again. And We Will Make America Great Again." • On January 20, 2017, President Trump delivered his FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS. He told America : "Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another -- but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the American People. For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished -- but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered -- but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes -- starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United States of America, is your country. What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again....So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words : You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. Together, We Will Make America Strong Again. We Will Make America Wealthy Again. We Will Make America Proud Again. We Will Make America Safe Again. And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God Bless You, And God Bless America." • In his STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS on February 5, 2019, President Trump said : "Everything that has come since -- our triumph over communism, our giant leaps of science and discovery, our unrivaled progress toward equality and justice -- ALL of it is possible thanks to the blood and tears and courage and vision of the Americans who came before. Think of this Capitol -- think of this very Chamber, where lawmakers before you voted to end slavery, to build the railroads and the highways, to defeat fascism, to secure Civil Rights, to face down an evil empire. Here tonight we have legislators from across this magnificent Republic. You have come from the rocky shores of Maine and the volcanic peaks of Hawaii; from the snowy woods of Wisconsin and the red deserts of Arizona; from the green farms of Kentucky and the golden beaches of California. Together, we represent the most extraordinary nation in all of history. What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered? I ask the men and women of this Congress : Look at the opportunities before us! Our most thrilling achievements are still ahead. Our most exciting journeys still await. Our biggest victories are still to come. We have not yet BEGUN TO DREAM. We must choose whether we are defined by our differences -- or whether we dare to transcend them. We must choose whether we squander our inheritance -- or whether we proudly declare that WE ARE AMERICANS : We do the incredible. We defy the impossible. We conquer the unknown. This is the time to re-ignite the American Imagination. This is the time a to search for the tallest summit, and set our sights on the brightest star. This is the time to rekindle the bonds of love and loyalty and memory that link us together as citizens, as neighbors, as patriots. This is our future -- our fate -- and our choice to make. I am asking you to CHOOSE GREATNESS. No matter the trials we face, no matter the challenges to come, we must go forward together. We must keep America FIRST in our hearts. We must keep Freedom alive in our souls. And we must always keep FAITH in America's Destiny -- that One Nation, Under God, must be the HOPE and the PROMISE and the LIGHT and the GLORY among all the nations of the world! Thank you. God Bless You, God Bless America, and Goodnight!" • • • DEAR READERS, President Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois, on February 11, 1861, knowing that he faced secession and civil war. He clearly knew that he was putting his life on the line for the Union -- for the Constitution -- for the UNITED States of America. Many US Presidents have had nicknames, mostly cynical and pointed. None of them has had the honorable nickname President Lincoln earned years before he became President -- Honest Abe. Honest Abe saved the Union. He got the job done. It cost him his life. • On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump became the 45th US President. He had no illusions about the buzzsaw he was walking into. He has said again and again, "I am your voice" to the American people. He has borne calumny, lies, treasonous attacks, ostracism, belittlement, and threats of impeachment, prison and death for the American people. Like Abraham Lincoln, Donald Trump has not flinched. He walks straight ahead, because the Union is at stake today as is was in 1861. President Trump understands the fight and is waiting for the constitutional "right moment" to defend the Union and preserve the Republic. Acting too soon would perhaps save him. BUT, waiting will surely save the Presidency, the constitutional co-equal branch of government that the Progressives are trying mightily to destroy. • Wait for the "right moment" and save the Union is what President Lincoln told America and the secessionists in his First Inaugural Address : "My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." • Wise advice from the wisest of America's Presidents.