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 government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

 ONE MORE GLANCE AT ABE, by Steven Hayward

... From time to time people ask me what I regard as the best Lincoln biography, and without hesitation I still always pick Lord Charnwood’s 1917 biography (though Allan Guelzo’s various books on Lincoln are equivalent in their quality). In fact I have assigned Charnwood in a course I taught at Berkeley—likely the only time the book has ever appeared on a course reading list there…The main reason for this preference is that Lord Charnwood understood Lincoln as a statesman, showing prudence in the highest Aristotelian sense of the term, to an extent that amazingly eludes most other modern biographers, and rendered in that late Victorian/Edwardian prose style that is simply a delight to read. Here’s just one worthy sample from the middle of the book as Charnwood is about to take up Lincoln’s presidency:

“We are to study how he acted when in power.  In almost every department of policy we shall see him watching and waiting while blood flows, suspending judgment, temporising, making trial of this expedient and of that, adopting in the end, quite unthanked, the measure of which most men will say, when it succeeds, “That is what we always said should be done.”  Above all, in that point of policy which most interests us, we shall witness the long postponement of the blow that killed negro slavery, the steady subordination of this particular issue to what will not at once appeal to us as a larger and a higher issue.  All this provoked at the time in many excellent and clever men dissatisfaction and deep suspicion; they longed for a leader whose heart visibly glowed with a sacred passion; they attributed his patience, the one quality of greatness which after a while everybody might have discerned in him, not to a self-mastery which almost passed belief, but to a tepid disposition and a mediocre if not a low level of desire.  We who read of him to-day shall not escape our moments of lively sympathy with these grumblers of the time; we shall wish that this man could ever plunge, that he could ever see red, ever commit some passionate injustice; we shall suspect him of being, in the phrase of a great philosopher, “a disgustingly well-regulated person,” lacking that indefinable quality akin to the honest passions of us ordinary men, but deeper and stronger, which alone could compel and could reward any true reverence for his memory.

These moments will recur but they cannot last.  A thousand little things, apparent on the surface but deeply significant; almost every trivial anecdote of his boyhood, his prime, or his closing years; his few recorded confidences; his equally few speeches made under strong emotion; the lineaments of his face described by observers whom photography corroborated; all these absolutely forbid any conception of Abraham Lincoln as a worthy commonplace person fortunately fitted to the requirements of his office at the moment, or as merely a “good man” in the negative and disparaging sense to which that term is often wrested.  It is really evident that there were no frigid perfections about him at all; indeed the weakness of some parts of his conduct is so unlike what seems to be required of a successful ruler that it is certain some almost unexampled quality of heart and mind went to the doing of what he did. There is no need to define that quality.  The general wisdom of his statesmanship will perhaps appear greater and its not infrequent errors less the more fully the circumstances are appreciated.  As to the man, perhaps the sense will grow upon us that this balanced and calculating person, with his finger on the pulse of the electorate while he cracked his uncensored jests with all comers, did of set purpose drink and refill and drink again as full and fiery a cup of sacrifice as ever was pressed to the lips of hero or of saint.”

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/cooper.htm

On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous "House Divided" speech, during which he warned the nation about slavery's destructive effect on the Union.

“If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.  We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy [the Kansas-Nebraska Act] was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to the slavery agitation.  Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.  A House divided against itself cannot stand.”

Gettysburg Address: 

“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.

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 can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor 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 government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Abraham Lincoln

November 19, 1863

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html

“May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of Civil War, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted on us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has grown. But we have forgotten God.”

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, NATIONAL FAST DAY PROCLAMATION, MARCH 1863

Above, Civil War photo - one of about 750,000 dead.

They perished in the seamless grass,— 

No eye could find the place; 

But God on his repealless list 

Can summon every face.

Emily Dickinson

”If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether...

...With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." 

Abraham Lincoln 

March 4, 1865

from 2nd Inaugural Address (pictured below)

from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d 

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, 

And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, 

I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. 

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, 

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, 

And thought of him I love. 

O powerful western fallen star! 

O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! 

O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star! 

O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! 

O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul. 

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, 

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, 

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, 

With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush

in the dooryard, With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, 

A sprig with its flower I break. 

In the swamp in secluded recesses, 

A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. 

Solitary the thrush, 

The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, 

Sings by himself a song. 

Song of the bleeding throat, 

Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know, If thou wast not granted to sing thou wouldst surely die.) 

Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, 

Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris, 

Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, 

Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen, 

Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, 

Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, 

Night and day journeys a coffin. 

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, 

With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, 

With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing, 

With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, 

With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, 

With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, 

With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, 

With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin, 

The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey, 

With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang, Here, coffin that slowly passes, 

I give you my sprig of lilac.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

And a century later...

https://youtu.be/I47Y6VHc3Ms

Martin Luther King 

at the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963 

“...I say to you today, my friend. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification", one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true and so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

From his last speech in Memphis the day before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968:

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”