We Have So Easily Forgotten

Here is an excerpt of a letter from Lincoln, rather timeless in its subject matter. He marks the tendency of human beings to forget the needs of those still languishing in injustice. Why? Because we're no longer subjects of injustice ourselves.

How does this apply to the work each of us is unwilling to do to save the unborn?

Don't worry, Lincoln assures us, even if we no longer show by our actions that we care about freedom and equality, there's still a very compelling reason to celebrate July 4. -SW

Springfield, Illinois
August 15, 1855

Hon. Geo. Robertson
Lexington, Kentucky

My dear Sir,

... You are not a friend of slavery in the abstract. In that speech you spoke of "the peaceful extinction of slavery" and used other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was, at some time, to have an end. Since then we have had thirty-six years of experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. The signal failure of Henry Clay, and other good and great men, in 1849, to effect anything in favor of gradual emancipation in Kentucky, together with a thousand other signs, extinguishes that hope utterly. On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self-evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self-evident lie." The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day -- for burning fire-crackers!!!

The spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery, has itself become extinct, with the occasion, and the men of the Revolution. Under the impulse of that occasion, nearly half the States adopted systems of emancipation at once; and it is a significant fact, that not a single State has done the like since. So far as peaceful, voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the Negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of the free mind, is now as fixed, and hopeless of change for the better, as that of the lost souls of the finally impenitent. The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation, continue together permanently—forever—half slave, and half free?" The problem is too mighty for me. May God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.

Your much obliged friend, and humble servant

A. LINCOLN

(The Living Lincoln, Paul M. Angle and Earl Schenck Miers, eds, [New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1992], p. 187-188)

Comments

Remember that you were slaves...
Deuteronomy 15:15

Remember that you were slaves...
Deuteronomy 16:12

Remember that you were slaves...
Deuteronomy 24:18

Remember that you were slaves...
Deuteronomy 24:22

All these were standing reminders to generation after generation to treat others kindly.