Abraham Lincoln Quotes
This is essentially a people's contest... whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men - to lift artificial weights from all shoulders - to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all - to afford all, an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.
Lincoln, Abraham. "Message to Congress in Special Session." 4 July 1861. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, Rutgers University Press, 1953, p. 438.
Essentially this quotation led to a major war and yhrn a later war of independence for Blacks in South Africa. Porter was the Attorney General of the English Cape Colony in South Africa. In an early legal ruling he observed that South Aftica was a colony under English law which did not permit discrimination on the basis of skin color. However, there was a large proportion of Afrikaners—whites of Dutch Ancestry who were culturally strong racists and saw the Blacks as a combination of potential rivals for land and a potential subjegated labor force. They tended to leave the Capetown area and English law. The Afrikaners ended up in a major war—the Boer War—against the English and although the English won the war, the Afrikaners won the political peace and ended up dominating South Africa and imposing apartheid. The Blacks of the mid 20th century had if nothing else, the 100 year old legal and moral precendent from Porter’s opinion which justified the ANC leading the attack on apartheid which finally succeeded. It took 100 years and millions of suffering and dying people but finally, the law of South Africa was as Porter had stated it, and since the Blacks were in the great majority, the Whites became the minority, but due to the ANC leadership of men like Nelson Mandella, the Blacks did not seek revenge on the Afrikaner whites although there was resentlent for generations.
This line was quoted by President William Clinton in his Beijing University Speech in June 1998
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.
