Existing comment:
Letter to Joshua Speed, Springfield, Illinois, August 24, 1842
Joshua Speed was Lincoln's best friend when they lived in Springfield. Speed married and moved to Kentucky, but the two men corresponded for many years. This anti-slavery sentiment was written twenty years before the Emancipation Proclamation.
As Abraham Lincoln developed and refined his political philosophy, he always turned to the Declaration of Independence as his guide to the American experiment. The idea that "all men are created equal" automatically negated the institution of slavery. The Declaration said nothing about black or white people or [are???] more or less equal -- it said all men. Through his writings, his speeches, and he actions -- in words all Americans could understand -- he patiently taught the real meaning of equality.
Writing about Lincoln years after his death, a reporter aptly noted:
"Washington taught the world to know us. Lincoln taught us to know ourselves." |