It is in order that each one of you may have, through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations.
Editor's note · Context
In an address to soldiers, Lincoln defines the purpose of free government as providing every individual with an open field and fair chance for success and equal privileges in life.
Share
More from Abraham Lincoln
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.
but whereas information has recently been received which affords reasonable grounds to expect that Her Britannic Majesty's Government and the executive and legislative branches of the government of Canada have taken and will continue to…
I do hereby notify them that all deserters who shall, within sixty days from the date of this proclamation, viz, on or before the 10th day of May, 1865, return to service or report themselves to a provost-marshal shall be pardoned, on…





