Since #Boston is taking down a statue of Abraham #Lincoln, now is the right time for all to read this beautiful quote from Lincoln, written in a private letter never meant for public view, in 1858:
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"I have never professed an indifference to the honors of official station; and were I to do so now,I should only make myself ridiculous.Yet I have never failed—do not now fail—to remember that in the republican cause there is a higher aim than that of mere office—I have not
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"allowed myself to forget that the abolition of the Slave-trade by Great Brittain [sic], was agitated a hundred years before it was a final success; that the measure had its open fire-eating opponents; its stealthy “don’t care” opponents; its dollars and cent opponents;
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"its inferior race opponents; its negro equality opponents; and its religion and good order opponents; that all these opponents got offices, and their adversaries got none—But I have also remembered that though they blazed, like tallow-candles for a century, at last they
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"flickered in the socket, died out, stank in the dark for a brief season, and were remembered no more, even by the smell—School-boys know that Wilberforce, and Granville Sharpe, helped that cause forward; but who can now name a single man who labored to retard it?
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"Remembering these things I can not but regard it as possible that the higher object of this contest may not be completely attained within the term of my natural life.
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"But I can not doubt either that it will come in due time. Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see."
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