April 6, 1859: Letter to H.L. Pierce In this letter Lincoln explains his thoughts on Thomas Jefferson and the phrase "all men are created equal." All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. |
Last updated: April 10, 2015