Lincoln and the Civil War

Was the Civil War begun over slavery, states’ rights, tariffs or taxes?

Abraham Lincoln scholar Ronald D. Rietveld, emeritus professor of history, spoke on “Lincoln and the Secession — Crisis and the Beginning of War” as this year’s Rietveld Lecture April 14. About 200 people attended his lecture, which is available for viewing on YouTube. The Rietveld Lecture series was launched as a tribute to the historian in 2009, the year he retired from Cal State Fullerton.

The following is the transcript of Rietveld's lecture:

One-hundred and fifty years ago this day, the confederates raised their flag’s stars and bars at Fort Sumter and the Federal garrison left and surrendered. Over the years there have been different opinions on how the Civil War started.  Some say that it was the issue of slavery; some say it was because of states rights. Some talked in terms of tariff and taxes. Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but not one state claimed to be seceding for that right. I would suggest that confederates opposed states rights, like the right of Northern states to not support the institution of slavery.  

When South Carolina delegates adopted their secession separation declaration of the immediate causes, which induce and justify the succession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, they noted an increasing hostility from the non-slave-holding states to the institution of slavery. But, “failed to fulfill their constitutional obligations by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. It is claimed that it was slavery, and not states rights, that birthed the Civil War. Without slavery in the United States, there would not have been war. Other seceding states, like Mississippi, echoed South Carolina’s position. Opposition is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, which was the greatest material interest of the world.”

As stated on Jan. 9, 1861, slavery’s labors, supplies and produce constitute the largest and most important positions of commerce on the earth. “A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and a blow at civilization.” These are quotes from the succession ordinances of South Carolina and Mississippi.

The issue of the war could not have been over the issue of tariffs and taxes because Southern members of Congress wrote the tariff of 1857 under which the United States functioned at its lowest rates at any point since 1816.  Although some white folks did not own slaves, they still believed in the institution of slavery because it was a part of the Southern way of life. The South produced almost 75 percent of U.S. exports that year.  Slavery was still expanding and remained very profitable until 1860.

What then produced the succession of slavery?

Answer … Abraham Lincoln. He was constitutionally elected as the 16th President of United States Nov. 6, 1860. 

How could Abraham Lincoln have become such a persona non grata to Southerners to set them to destroy the United States? Southern people were afraid what the election meant to them as a slave-holding people. Thus the succession crisis immediately began after the election results returned to South Carolina. Long ago the South accepted the doctrine that succession was a valid constitutional remedy, and always applicable when needed. The South clearly committed themselves to the principle and doctrine of 1858.

Meanwhile, Lincoln had to confront issues and events, which were in the process of destroying the very nation he had been elected to serve.

Persistently, from Lincoln’s young years on, he believed that slavery was unjust. In the 1850s, he expected Northern states to respect the Constitution of the United States and the compromises that were contained there in, which was protecting the institution. And that the national government had the authority to act against the slavery in the District of Columbia, as well as in the national territories.

As far back as 1837, Lincoln, as a member of the Illinois State Legislature, criticized slavery as unwise and unjust. He criticized abolitionism in Illinois when it was very weak and unpopular. It took genuine political courage to take that position at that time. He certainly did not expect any political benefit out of his position. In 1860, Lincoln said, “it is the same as it is now. ...

“This is a world of compensations and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just god not retain it.”

Steven Arnold attacks Lincoln’s slavery position in the campaign for the Illinois Senate in 1858, and again in the presidential campaign in 1860, Douglas stressed Lincoln’s position as “favoring negro social equality between the white and black races.”

During the 1860 presidential campaign, Southerners who were not especially interested in reading Lincoln’s speeches relied on what Steven A. Douglas said about Lincoln’s positions on racial equality. The tyrannical North is about to elect a man from the West, whose great sin was that he opposed the institution of slavery on moral grounds.

Throughout 1850, there was an influential group of Southern political leaders who were meeting at Vice President John Charles Breckenridge’s home in Washington City, which was next door to Steve A. Douglas’ house. They insisted that the only safeguard for slavery’s future is to strike for independence. Period.  And, as the Louisville Courier declared, “The irrepressible conflict is now upon us.”

Already in 1858, Southern leaders began talking about unified separation from the United States. They also threatened succession if the Republicans, with Lincoln, captured the presidency.

During the campaign, Lincoln did not want to credit any fear regarding secession in the country. Even in the fall of 1860, he believed that secession in the South was full of hot air.  As a son of the South, specifically Kentucky, he believed that he understood the Southern mind, and tried to continually refer people to his positions in his written speeches. He did this repeatedly because he sincerely believed that Southern people would find in his speeches that he would not touch the institution of slavery where it was located.

In a response to a letter in early 1860, Lincoln replied, “The people of the South have too much good sense and good temper to attempt the ruin of the government.”

Throughout the summer and fall of 1860, Lincoln was isolated from serious talks of secession across the South. As people talked about these issues on their porches and in their country stores, they turned Lincoln into a caricature. The talk made him out to be a “Black Republican.” Black meaning pro-black, who had secretly aligned with Northern abolitionists who were ready to spread slave rebellion across the South.

Shortly before the October elections, thumbing though a list of how Springfield, Ill., would vote, he concluded that 23 Springfield ministers would not vote for Lincoln. “How could men with Bibles in their hands support a candidate who was pro slavery?” This was a spiritually troubling thing for Lincoln. In the time of secession threats and election stresses, Lincoln stated, “I’m going through processes of crystallization spiritually.”

Lincoln expressed a great sense of relief in the second week of October when election results were released. These results indicated that he had won the popular vote in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. He wrote William Steward in New York, “it looks as if the government is about to fall into our hands.”

Lincoln maintained silence all though October, even though his supporters suggested that he write a public letter in those last days of the political campaign. His supporters said he should set fourth his ideas and allay fears in the South. But Lincoln never altered his strategy because he believed that anything he said would be mistaken or misused. Lincoln believed that leaving the secession alone would simply make it disappear.

On Election Day 1860, it was sunny, and Lincoln had one great fear. If he did not win the 35 electoral votes of the state of New York, he might not win the majority in the House of Representatives. Shortly after midnight, the telegraph keys spelled out that New York had fallen into the Lincoln column, and that he would indeed be the next president of the United States.

“Well boys, your troubles are all over now. Mine have just begun,” he said to a couple of reporters the next morning after the election results were released. He went home at 2 a.m., but could not fall asleep. 

Lincoln had received more votes than any man who had run for President of the United States, and over a half million more than John Charles Vermont, who was the first Republican presidential candidate in 1856.  Lincoln’s strong Northern sweep was more than enough to give him victory. In fact, he would have won the electoral office even if the votes for John Bell, John Breckenridge and Steven Douglas were all combined as one candidate. Lincoln was elected by only 39.9 percent of the popular vote, and therefore, was the the first president elected by a minority sectional electorate.

However, Lincoln would not take office until March 4, 1861.  Even if the Republicans had controlled the national government in the winter of the succession, they were helpless to stem the tide flowing secession. We forget that President James Buchanan was still in office and held all executive power in his hands from November until March 1861....

Lincoln had no control over what was happening while Buchanan was in office. Lincoln has taken a lot of heat that he did not deserve for the winter secession movement. Lincoln began to develop the administration and policies in the first days after the election, even though he did not officially have executive power. Likewise, President Roosevelt did not have presidential power from his election in 1932 until March 1933.

Though gifted and capable, Lincoln did not fully understand that secession, even war, was a possibility. Lincoln, with his Republican colleagues, was used to the persistent enmity between the North and the South. For 30 years they found that enmity did not lead to war.  The North encountered bluster between 1820 and 1850. When the Republican Party was organized in 1856, they believed that the Southern talk was mostly bluff. It had been said that Lincoln’s greatest error in political judgment was because he failed to grasp the growing secession’s spread across the South.

It was widely accepted that the Illinois State Journal reflected Lincoln’s views, but Lincoln remained silent through the secession.  A few days after the election, the Journal assured readers that they would be able to put down any batch of traders bent on breaking up the Union.

Dec. 20, 1860, was the very day that South Carolina seceded. The Journal warned that treason must be put down at all hazards. Another editorial declared that if the war should come about, it would overthrow slavery. If war came about, slaves would escape to the North and revolt against their masters. Lincoln believed that if he did nothing to provoke secession, the majority of the slave states would remain in the Union.

Lincoln constantly received requests to say something. Lincoln bristled at those requests because he said the slave states could read for themselves that he would not interfere with slavery.

Southerners were not interested in reading Lincoln’s speeches.

Furthermore, Sen. Truman tried to alert Lincoln of the growing succession. To warn Lincoln, Truman wrote him a long letter. Lincoln answered, “It is with the most profound appreciation of your motive and highest respect for your judgment, too, that I feel constrained as the President to make no declaration for the public.”

It was all in print, all easy access. He could not phantom how any additional production of mind would meet a better fate. Then Lincoln declared, “It would make me appear as if I’m repenting for the crime of being elected, and was anxious to apologize and beg forgiveness. To so represent me would be the principle use of any letter that I might now thrust upon the public.”

But, even an editor of the New York Times, Henry J. Raymond, audaciously offered Lincoln some sentences, which Lincoln could offer to the general public to allay their general fear.  Lincoln responded quoting Jesus’ words, “They seek a sign, and no sign shall be given them.”

These words were spoken to an evil and an adulterous generation. He characterized his own generation as being possessed of party malice and not public good. Lincoln remained silent, most Republicans remained silent, following a policy of masterly inactivity.

So, hate mail continued to arrive at the Lincoln home. A picture that showed her husband with a noose around his neck horrified Mrs. Lincoln. Lincoln was compared to the devil. He was threatened of death by hanging, gibbet and stiletto. Some signed these threats “Southern Brotherhood” or not at all.

The pressure for Lincoln was so strong he yielded partially. When he had to give a message of victory in November 1860, Lincoln slipped in two paragraphs, written by Sen. Tremble, to allay the fear. When Lincoln gave his speech with Tremble’s paragraphs, Tremble actually sat next to Lincoln, while Lincoln spoke.

The speech failed to have Lincoln’s desired effect. He complained because not one newspaper used it to quiet public anxiety. Lincoln predicted that in 1858 the sectional conflict would not be resolved until a crisis was reached and passed. His strategy was to show no signs of backing off.

Time was slipping away, he would not interfere with slavery, he said. He began to explore options after he became the President of the United States on March 4. 

“Ours should be a government of fraternity,” Lincoln told John Nicholade, his private secretary. The necessity of keeping the government together by force was an ugly point, he said. The very existence of a general or national government implies the legal duty and right to maintain its own integrity, and the right of a state to secede is not an open debate.  It is the duty of the President to execute the laws and cannot entertain any illusions of dismemberment.

After six months of being president, Lincoln left Illinois and traveled north to Chicago to meet with his vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, whom he had never met before. During this same time, President Buchanan believed that the secession crisis had been precipitated by Lincoln’s election. Buchanan believed that it was Lincoln’s responsibility to deal with the secession, even though Buchanan had the presidential power. Buchanan did understand something that few Northern people did; that was the danger presented by secession was in fact a great and immediate danger.

Reading Buchanan’s address, which he delivered to Congress ... (Thomas Jefferson was the first president to send his speech to Congress, because in those days you didn’t give speeches in person. It wasn’t until Woodrow Wilson that his process changed. So the speech was sent to a clerk to give the State of the Union Address.) Lincoln read Buchanan’s presentation and noticed that they both held the same ideas on secession, but disagreed on whether states could be coerced back into the Union. Lincoln believed that you could use force to get states back into the Union because it can be considered rebellion. Buchanan was appalled at the President’s assessment of the national crisis, and Lincoln believed that Buchanan was still a part of the problem. The Republicans and Democrats, who lost total support for Buchanan, began to organize their own positions to try and save the Union.

As the telegraph flashed news that Lincoln was elected the next president, the South Carolina Legislature called a convention to secede. In December 1860, the convention meeting in South Carolina voted unanimously for secession.

Everyone wanted to know what Lincoln’s thoughts were, because he was saying nothing. The Journal of Springfield declared that South Carolina could not pull out of the Union without a fight. If she violates the law, then comes the tug-of-war. The editor, Edward Baker, for whom Lincoln named their second son, had now announced that the President of the United States had a plain duty to perform....

We’ve talked about Buchanan and Lincoln, but we have not talked about Jefferson Davis. Sen. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and other secessionist leaders claimed to be only defending established institutions. Secessionist leaders claimed that succession was legal and constitutional. Davis said, “theirs was not a revolution to engage in a chaotic fight for the rights of man, but a struggle for inherited rights, especially the right for property and slaves.”  As chances of settlement acceptable to southern members of Congress receded, Davis began to get involved with a number of southern congressmen in conversations. They began meeting at Davis’ home on Eye Street in Washington, D.C.

On Jan. 5, 1861, a caucus of senators from Southern states moving towards succession made a major decision. To call a convention that would meet at Montgomery, Ala., to establish a confederacy for the South.

By February 1861, they wanted concrete action before Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4. These Southern leaders wanted no part of the United States while President Lincoln and his Republican party controlled the United States government.

A Kentucky senator came up with a compromise. He proposed that they would take the Missouri Compromise line of 1820 and move it all the way to the eastern border of California. Free above, slave below.

Lincoln disagreed because it would extend the area of slavery across the nation. Lincoln continually assured his Southern friends that he would not interfere with slavery in the states, or the District of Colombia, or the territories. In fact, he would not interfere with interstate slave trade. He would even have some of the non-slave-holding states repeal or modify some of their personal liberty laws.

During the winter secession four states did take action regarding personal liberty laws. Also, Lincoln supported nearly two-fifths of the senators in Congress who joined in passing a Constitutional amendment to guarantee slavery in the states against federal interference from the government. That was a major concession, in fact, as it was sent to the states in March 1861 and three states ratified it.

Lincoln wrote his friend Stevens, who later became the vice president of the Confederacy, “You think it’s right and ought to be extended, but we think it’s wrong and think it should be abolished.”

But then, quietly, Lincoln sent word to General William Scott to retake any fort seized from the secession’s military. Then, rumors reached Lincoln that President Buchanan had ordered Maj. Robert Anderson, who commanded Fort Sumter, to evacuate the fort.

Lincoln angrily declared: “If that is true, they ought to hang him.”

Buchanan had ordered Anderson to leave Fort Moultrie and that’s exactly what Anderson did. On Dec. 26, Anderson moved the garrison to an island near Fort Sumter because he felt that he was in danger of being attacked. “If nothing but blood will prevent this Union from being whole, let it flow,” declared an Indiana newspaper. Some Republicans declared that a war would inevitably be a consequence of succession.

Dec. 13, 1860. Secessionists declared that any hope of compromise no longer existed. The arguments exhausted all hope of relief in the Union through the agency for committees, Congressional legislation or constitutional amendments. “Trust in the South that there will be no pretenses or guarantees. The honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people are to be only found in a Southern Confederacy.”

As early as December 1860, Jefferson Davis said, that no human power can save the Union, “all the cotton states will go.” South Carolina seceded and made the official demand of surrender of Fort Sumter. …

Meanwhile, Lincoln is preparing his inaugural address, and doesn’t leave Springfield until Feb. 11, 1861. When his train stops in Indianapolis on his birthday, Feb. 12, 1861, Lincoln asks the crowd, “If the government insists upon holding its own fort or retaking its own forts that belong to it, which of these things is coerced?” When it got to Pennsylvania, Lincoln said, “There will be no bloodshed unless it is forced upon the government, and will not use force unless force is used against it.

“I shall endeavor to preserve the peace of this country as far as possibly can be done, and consistently with the maintenance of the institution of the country.“

Lincoln delivered another speech in Pennsylvania saying, “It is not with any pleasure that I contemplate the possibility that a necessity arise in this country for the use of the military arm.”

When he arrived in Trenton, N.J., Lincoln spoke of the sacrifices by American soldiers to bring about a new nation.

But Lincoln said that they might have to have another war to combat succession disrespecting everything the American Revolution fought for. “I shall do all that may be in my power to promote a peaceful settlement of our difficulties. But it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly, and if I do my duty, will you sustain me, will you not?” Lincoln questioned.

Lincoln’s inaugural address was much on his mind and he let Steward look at it and, it was a strong address. The last line: “With you and not with me is the solid question of whether be peace or sword.”

Steward remarked that that would only further secession. So, Lincoln revised the last line by saying, “In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, not a mind is a momentous issue of civil war.”

On a sunny day March 4, 1861, Lincoln took the oath of office in front of 50,000 people.

He spoke in terms of Southern fears that were not valid in this new administration; they were not going to endanger slave property. “The central issue of the controversy said one section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended,” said Lincoln. 

While Lincoln is speaking, Steven A. Douglas is standing right there and interjects, “Good. That’s so … No Coercion.”

However, the heart of Lincoln’s inaugural was a lengthy repudiation of the right of succession. Secessionists were not persuaded, and in fact heard a clank of metal in that address. Buchanan said, “I cannot say what he means until I read his address. I can not understand the secret meaning of the document, which had been simply read at my hearing.”

Well, they got him back to the White House and General Scott said, “Thank God we’ve got a government.”

For almost two months, an uneasy truce existed regarding two of the federal forts. ... The morning after the inauguration, delivered on his desk was a telegram for Maj. Anderson for Sumter, who basically said reinforcements to Sumter would be impossible now. Anderson estimated it would take no less than 20,000 disciplined troops to retake the fort, keeping in mind their growing depletion of provisions.

Then Lincoln turned to Scott and asked if they could relieve the fort. Scott replied, “Almost inevitably, we cannot and it would take a fleet of war vessels to transport together with an additional 25,000 men, and it would take about eight months to train the men.” Overwhelmed from this advice, Lincoln became skeptical.

Southern unionists, Northern conservatives and Secretary of State Steward, encouraged Lincoln to withdraw the Sumter garrison. Steward did not only believe the policy, but sabotaged his president. He promised Southern commissioners that Sumter would be evacuated. He even leaked the same thing to the press, but never consulted his chief.

Republicans held that Sumter should be reinforced, that even if it began war it should be. On the same day Lincoln told his cabinet about it, someone said they should supply the fort. Also, on that same day, the Chicago Tribune came up with a suggestion: “Send a ship with provisions, but not with reinforcement, and make no secret of it undertaking.”

The Tribune declared that he would place upon Mr. Jefferson Davis the responsibility of firing on a provision ship going to the relief of American citizens, or suffering it to quickly accomplish the objective of his mission.

By the third week of March, Lincoln thought he had found a formula like the Tribune suggested. Then Gustavus V. Fox, the Brother Postmaster Blaire, suggested the same thing. “Send in relief, medicines, food, no ammunition.”

But, Orville Browning and his friends said, “whatever policy that Lincoln came up with, war was still possible.”

He told Lincoln, “it is important that the traitors should be the aggressors. The first attempt to furnish supplies or reinforcements to Sumter will induce aggression by South Carolina, and the government will stand justified, before the entire country repelling that aggression.”

By mid April, Sumter could not be preserved. And by the end of March, Lincoln had to make a decision. He ordered a garrison to supply medicines and food. President Lincoln was willing to accept war, rather than the disillusion of the government, the Federal Union, which Jefferson Davis said no longer existed.

Note, on Feb. 15, 1861, the provisional Congress of the Confederacy said that Fort Sumter and the other Southern forts should be taken by negotiation or by force, if necessary.

On April 9, the Confederate Cabinet made the critical decision to order Fort Sumter attacked, before the relief expedition arrived. Secretary of State Robert Tombs opposed the decision of the Cabinet. Tombs declared, “it will lose us every friend that we have in the North and strike a hornets nest, legions now quiet will sting us to death, it is unnecessary, and will put us in the wrong, and is fatal.” 

On April 10, P.G.T. Beauregard, general in command, received orders from the Confederate government in Montgomery to demand the evacuation of the fort. And on April 12, that is exactly what did happen.

By April, Confederate leaders believed that the upper south would join them if they attacked Sumter. Secessionist leaders in Virginia arrived in Charleston and said that they would join the Republic of South Carolina even if and when they should strike a blow.

At 4:30 in the morning, April 12, 1861, a shot arched across the sky in the middle of the night and crashed on the parade grounds at Fort Sumter. So for the next 34 hours, 50 gun and mortars fired 40,000 rounds to Sumter 10,000.

April 14, with Fort Sumter in flames, they tried to put the fire out, but it re-caught three different times, and Anderson took down the stars and stripes, and the Confederates raised the stars and bar. Anderson left with his flag, five slightly wounded men, their personal side arms, and got aboard the Isabel steamer for New York.

Civil War had begun.

President Lincoln declared that a state of insurrection existed in the seceded states. On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 military volunteers to suppress the rebellion. Lincoln ordered up the regular army and regular navy and proclaimed a blockade to the coast. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus between Washington and Philadelphia.

With Congress adjourned he called them to assemble July 4, 1861.

Meanwhile, four more slave states went out, considering it coercion. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas brought the number of Confederate states to 11. During the next months Lincoln explained his actions to two friends, “you and I both anticipated the cause, of the country, would be advanced by making the attempt to supply Fort Sumter even if it should fall.” After the forts surrendered, Lincoln wrote, “The plan succeeded, they attacked Sumter, and it fell….”

One bright spot in all of this: in mid-April, Lincoln received a request form the small Republic of San Marino, and the mountains around Italy. The request was that the two republics, the United States and San Marino join together in an alliance. They wanted to make Lincoln a citizen of San Marino, and Lincoln accepted the citizenship. Lincoln wrote San Marino and said, “the trial to which the Republic is passing is one of deep import and involves the question whether representatives of the republic were a grand eye so much is to be safe among foreign enemies can save itself from the dangers of domestic faction.” Then Lincoln added, “I have faith in a good result.”

This quote later became the center of the Gettysburg address.

I am thankful for my colleague Dr. Freedman in the Department of History for bringing this to my attention.

Lincoln was now in charge of the Northern response to secession. He believed that Southerners commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind and invited an egregious sophism. An invalid argument, rebellious and sugar coated, they’d been drugging the public mind of their section for more than 30 years.

In the very last speech that he gave, President Lincoln gave, and those who know that whenever I go to the White House, I like to do this. I stand outside, in front of the north portico and I look up at the window above the center entrance to the White House on the north side. It has a Jefferson sash, and if pushed up, it creates a whole opening to the White House. And that’s where Lincoln spoke.

On April 11, 1865, he said these words, “We all agree that the seceded states are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the military in regards to those states is to get them back into that proper practical relation.”

He added, “I do not only believe that this is possible, but easier to do this, even without deciding whether these states have been out of the Union, than with it.”

This was the same speech where Lincoln announced that he believed that the blacks who had fought in the Civil War, to the tune of about 180,000 plus, along with literate blacks, should have the right to citizenship in the United States. In that audience was a 26-year-old man, an actor, who said that would be the last speech he would ever make. That was John Wilkes Booth, and it was Lincoln’s last public address.

Let me say some things in conclusion and sum up with you what I have done.

For over 30 years, Southerners in the Deep South and slave states talked about secession as a way to protect their way of life and Southern civilization. After 1858, Southern leaders talked openly about secession in case a Republican candidate became president of the United States. This open threat was discussed publicly, long before Lincoln ever became a candidate for president. But his nomination, and his election to the presidential office in November, caused Southern leadership to plan the establishment of a new Confederacy. After the Confederates organized their nation, their provisional Congress resolved in Feb. 15, 1861, to take forts either by negotiation or by force, which ever was applicable. Also on Feb. 24, they charged the Federal Government for the forts still held by the United States.

Although elected, Lincoln was not yet president of the United States. But on April 9, Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet had Fort Sumter attacked, before the relief arrived.  And the next day, Gen. Beauregard received the order and attacked the fort; thus at 4:30 a.m., the Civil War started. In the middle of all this Confederate activity, President Lincoln labored to make sure that if the war came the Confederates would be responsible for its beginning. Abraham Lincoln’s election as the President of the United States became the excuse to destroy the existing United States by Southern pro-slavery leaders in the Deep South.

And, the bloodiest war in American history began on American soil for the next four years, 1861-1865. As Lincoln proclaimed in the middle of this tragic war, there was a redeeming purpose to this war, and the bloodshed being split on American soil. “This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, a government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not parish on the Earth.” Thank you.

— Transcribed by Bryce Kobayashi

May 5, 2011