Gettysburg Address Quotes
The government relationship to people phrase, although probably Lincoln's most famous, was not totally original. John Adams came close in a 1774 proclamation. As did John Marshall in his McCulloch v. Maryland decision. Daniel Webster's Speech on Foot's Resolution was very close. as was Theodore Parker in 1850 {629578}. There was also Thomas Cooper in 1795. But the earliest appears to be John Wycliffe in 1382 {567292}. It is not known with which of these Lincoln was familiar.
Some people think that this quotation was partially copied from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. However, he gave this speech more than a decade earlier. Lincoln might have been familiar with it. His statue is in the U. S. Capitol.
This appears to be the earliest use of the phrase Lincoln later made famous in the Gettysburg Address.
In his famous Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln also used the “malice” and “charity” coupling in the reverse order. There is no evidence that Lincoln had ever seen the Adams letter.
Churchill saw the American Civil War as inevitable as it placed two huge forces in opposition. The moral force to eliminate slavery was up against the economic force of the entire Southern economy. The Southern slaves were worth more than all the factories, railroads, stores, real estate, farms and goods of the entire South. If slavery ended, the upper class Southerners would all be economically ruined. If slavery did not end, the United States would contain the most evil and immoral institution then known to the world.
President Abraham Lincoln followed this speech with his Gettysburg Address.
This is a very important quotation. Abraham Lincoln obtained a printed copy of Parker’s sermon and underlined this quotation on his copy. Later when he was President he used a slight variation of Parker’s last phrase in the last line of his famous Gettysburg Address.
