Abraham Lincoln Quotes
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God ... and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
Lincoln, Abraham. "Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day." 30 Mar. 1863. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, vol. 6, Rutgers University Press, 1953, p. 156.
This is the Holy Book of the Afro Athlican Constructive Church. This Afro-centric religion, founded in the 1920s in America considered Blacks the “sons and daughters of Ethiopia,” recognized Rogers as “Shepard” and Marcus Garvey as "Prophet and Apostle". The religion and The Holy Piby was so threatening to established Negro religions of the time that it was banned in Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean. It is considered one of the fundamental religious sources for Rastafarians. It is often referred to as “The Black Man’s Bible.” It was translated from a “lost Amharic text” which tells of the lost tribe of Israel migrating to Ethiopia.
There is a striking similarity of speech between Menelik and the monarchs of Europe with respect to his Divine right of rule and dependence on God. Ethiopia, in contrast to the rest of Africa, was a Christian kingdom and had been so for centuries. Menelik mobilized his people and produced a humiliating defeat for the Italians at Adowa in 1896 who never forgot and returned to conquer Ethiopia in the early part of World War II.
Kentucky was a slave state but public opinion was not clearly in favor of secession. Governor Magoffin was a Southern sympathizer and wanted Kentucky to secede with the other slave states. However, the education level of Kentucky was greater than those of the deep South and the State Legislature and many Union patriots. Only 16% of Kentucky were slaves. The economy of Kentucky was much more involved with the Northern States than the other Southern states. The legislature rebuffed the Governor’s call for a secession convention. Then Magoffin demanded that President Lincoln remove the Federal Troops that had been stationed in Kentucky. Lincoln did not want the Southern forces to occupy Kentucky and then use their occupation to pressure the State into joining the confederacy. Also, Lincoln took the position that as long as Kentucky was a state of the United States they were obligated to assist in putting down the rebellion. At this time, the Kentucky Congressional Delegation was overwhelmingly pro Union, as was the new State legislature which had such a pro-Union majority that they could override the Governor’s veto. Less than two weeks later, September 4, 1861, Confederate Major General Leonidas Polk tried to occupy Kentucky as Lincoln had feared, and the Legislature asked the Federal Government to send more troops and eject the Southern forces from the South of Kentucky. Kentucky Confederate sympathizers formed a rump government and voted to secede, and despite Jefferson Davis’s concerns that the State Legislature was being bypassed, Kentucky was accepted in the Confederacy. The result was that there were Kentucky military units in the Confederate Army and in the Union Army with the latter being in the majority. Kentucky was on both sides. This delicate balance and that of Maryland was why Lincoln did not include those states in his Emancipation Proclamation.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
