Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today we honor the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's death. We all know the tragic story: On the evening of April 14, 1865, the 4-year anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War and just days after its end at Appomattox, President Lincoln was shot while attending the theater. The next morning, his last, labored breathing ceased. His fanatically unreconciled assassin was enraged by Lincoln's achievements: his saving of the Union; his emancipation of the slaves; his forecast that the freed slaves would soon be voting; his rededication of the Nation to the Declaration and to the Constitution in which it is embodied. Lincoln lived for these things, and he also died for them. Days earlier Lincoln's assassin, in attendance at the second inaugural, had ignored the reelected President's eloquent plea ``to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds,'' doing so ``with malice toward none, with charity for all.'' A year-and-a-half earlier, dedicating the cemetery at Gettysburg, Lincoln had said that ``history would little note nor long remember'' what he said. Here he was wrong--or at least falsely modest--for the Gettysburg Address is among the most beautiful and memorable speeches in history.…”