Abraham Lincoln the Most Perfect Ruler of Men the World Has Ever Seen

Please keep in mind the requirement that the research paper is to be written in an academic style. Please do not write a biography or only describe who, what, where, and when in the paper -- such is only part of what goes into the writing of an academic paper.

An academic paper involves making a point or taking a stand on the issue being discussed. For example, Why is the White House (or some other landmark or memorial) important or meaningful to America? Why is Person Z a good / bad / mediocre politician? Specifically, an issue is examined (positives and negatives, pros and cons, comparison and contrast) in the paper, and then you state what you consider to be is the stronger view/perspective based on the points you have raised in the body of the paper. Within the introduction, please include a thesis statement (or topical sentence), which is the basic argument of your paper presented in one sentence. You should also include a brief sentence (or two) describing the layout of your argument (ex., In this paper, "I will discuss Item A, Item B, and Item C." -- filling in what those items to which A, B, C refer).

I have provided various points to consider when writing the paper in the announcement entitled "Writing the Research Paper: Suggestions and Expectations". Other points are posted in the Week 1 section under the "Research Paper" button.

For those students who are unsure of their topics: think of a issue of personal concern to you or an issue that is in the news or being discussed by one's family or friends. Then, you can search in the Online library for articles pertaining to it. In addition, consider the politics of that issue by answering some or all of the following questions. What is at stake -- economically, socially, morally, etc -- in America or in one's community (or what is at stake if such a thing were to occur or to continue)? Who is making the decisions (individuals, groups, politicians, etc.) and who has more influence in the deciding what is being done? Regarding that issue, what role do citizens have in deciding what happens? What does the issue tell us about freedom, equality, or democracy in the U.S.A.? Please provide evidence that supports one's views on the issue; such evidence can be found in articles and books.

Abraham Lincoln: The Most Perfect Ruler of Men the World Has Ever Seen

Innovative Learning is the primary means of exercising one’s autonomy, a means of understanding and working within the prevailing context in a positive way. It is a dialogue that begins with curiosity and is fueled by knowledge, leading to understanding,. It is inclusive, unlimited, unending, knowing and dynamic. It allows us to change the way things are.

We have the means within us to free ourselves from the constraints of the past, which lock us into imposed roles and attitudes. By examining and understanding the past, we can move into the future unencumbered by it. We become free to express ourselves, rather than endlessly trying to prove ourselves.

On Becoming A Leader by Warren Bettis; Chapter 4 - PG 79


Knowing your values and priorities


Abraham Lincoln was an avid reader.

The Bible, Aesop’s Fables, Robinson Crusoe, The Pilrgim’s Progess and Sinbad the Sailor

He studies law independently.

He studied the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

He kept the Bible and Aesop’s Fables close at hand

Those who seek to please everybody please nobody.

THE BEASTS of the field and forest had a Lion as their king. He was neither wrathful, cruel, nor tyrannical, but just and gentle as a king could be. During his reign he made a royal proclamation for a general assembly of all the birds and beasts, and drew up conditions for a universal league, in which the Wolf and the Lamb, the Panther and the Kid, the Tiger and the Stag, the Dog and the Hare, should live together in perfect peace and amity. The Hare said, "Oh, how I have longed to see this day, in which the weak shall take their place with impunity by the side of the strong." And after the Hare said this, he ran for his life.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation.

Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design;

and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. — But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good.

We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift."

They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes.

It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A leader's job often includes your people's attitudes and behaviors. Some suggestions to accomplish this:

1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
4. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
5. Let the other person save face
6. Praise the slightest improvement. Be hearty in your apporbation and lavish in your praise
7. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to
8. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct
9. Make the other person happy about the thing you suggest

"Resolved, That we hold in accordance with the opinions and practices of all the great statesmen of all parties for the first sixty years of the administration of the government, that under the Constitution, Congress possesses full power to prohibit slavery in the territories; and that while we will maintain all constitutional rights of the South, we also hold that justice, humanity, the principles of freedom, as expressed in our Declaration of Independence and our National Constitution, and the purity and perpetuity of our government require that that power should be exerted, to prevent the extension of slavery into territories heretofore free."

1. That there were pressing reasons for the formation of the Republican Party.
2. That the Republican movement was very important to the future of the nation.
3. All free soil people needed to rally against slavery and the existing political evils.
4. The nation must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the integrity of its territorial parts, and the Republicans were the ones to do it.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends -- those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work -- who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now? --now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail -- if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come. - House Divided Speech

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience - to reject all progress - all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" were of the same opinion - thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument.

But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask - all Republicans desire - in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.

some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty;"

Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up."

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast our votes with their view, and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?

contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man

such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

Just before he affixed his name to the document, he said, "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper."

My angel,—his name is Freedom,
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west.
And fend you with his wing.

I break your bonds and masterships,
And I unchain the slave:
Free be his heart and hand henceforth,
As wind and wandering wave.

An important part of that signal was the invitation to the slaves to take up arms and participate in the fight for their own freedom. That more than 185,000 slaves as well as free blacks accepted the invitation indicates that those who had been the victims of thraldom were now among the most enthusiastic freedom fighters.

It should be remembered, however, that in the Proclamation he called emancipation "an act of justice," and in later weeks and months he did everything he could to confirm his view that it was An Act of Justice. And no one was more anxious than Lincoln to take the necessary additional steps to bring about actual freedom. Thus, he proposed that the Republican Party include in its 1864 platform a plank calling for the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment. When he was "notified" of his renomination, as was the custom in those days, he singled out that plank in the platform calling for constitutional emancipation and pronounced it "a fitting and necessary conclusion to the final success of the Union cause." Early in 1865, when Congress sent the amendment to Lincoln for his signature, he is reported to have said, "This amendment is a King's cure for all the evils. It winds the whole thing up.

O Brothers mine, to-day we stand
Where half a century sweeps our ken,
Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,
Struck off our bonds and made us men.

James Weldon Johnson - Fifty Years
New York Times, which published it on its editorial page on January 1, 1913

It was bad enough that a casual reading of the Proclamation made clear that it did not set the slaves free. It was also clear that neither the Reconstruction amendments nor the legislation and Executive orders of subsequent years had propelled African Americans much closer to real freedom and true equality. The physical violence, the wholesale disfranchisement, and the widespread degradation of blacks in every conceivable form merely demonstrated the resourcefulness and creativity of those white Americans who were determined to deny basic constitutional rights to their black brothers.

The best president we’ve ever had … depends. Without Washington there would not, arguably, be a United States as we know it. Without Lincoln there would not be a union of states or a “new birth of freedom” to inspire global aspirations. Without FDR there might not be democratic capitalism at home or abroad. That said, I must confess to a sneaking, if contradictory, admiration for both Woodrow Wilson the moralist, and Calvin Coolidge the minimalist. - The Five Minute Interview with Richard Norton Smith in the Mason Gazette July 2006

"I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly , those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally," President Lincoln told an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington less than a month before his murder.

"Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a 'sacred right of self-government.' These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other."

"This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; cause the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest."

Mr. Lincoln understood that fundamental to one's attitude toward slavery was one's willingness to let others' sweat on one's behalf.

Liberty, work, and justice were closely connected concepts for Mr. Lincoln. "The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable [sic] things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two difference and incompatable [sic] names — liberty and tyranny," Mr. Lincoln told the U.S. Sanitary Commission Fair in Baltimore on April 18, 1864.

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberators, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one.

Mr. Lincoln's philosophy was often revealed in letters designed for publication. One such letter was to Kentucky editor Albert G. Hodges in April 1864. President Lincoln began: "I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling."

Mr. Lincoln said that "two or three weeks would do me good, but I cannot fly from my thoughts; my solicitude for this great country follows me where I go."

Long after Mr. Lincoln first issued the Draft Emancipation Proclamation, Mr. Lincoln met with two Wisconsin politicians. It was August 1864. Former Governor Alexander W. Randall and Judge Joseph T. Mills visited with President Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home on the outskirts of Washington. It was a low point in Union military fortunes and the President's political fortunes. Foes and friends alike seemed determined to deprive President Lincoln of a second term. So embattled did the President seem that Randall urged him to take a vacation from the conflict for two weeks. Mr. Lincoln said that "two or three weeks would do me good, but I cannot fly from my thoughts; my solicitude for this great country follows me where I go." President Lincoln make it clear that by defending the Union, black soldiers had earned their freedom:

"There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe. My enemies pretend I am now carrying on this war for the sole purpose of Abolition. So long as I am President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the union. But no human power can subdue this rebellion without the use of emancipation policy, and every other policy calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion.

Judge Mills wrote: "I saw the President was a man of deep convictions, of abiding faith in justice, truth, and Providence. His voice was pleasant, his manner earnest and emphatic. As he warmed with his theme, his mind grew to the magnitude of his body. I felt I was in the presence of the great guiding intellect of the age, and that those 'huge Atlantean shoulders were fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies.' His transparent honesty, republican simplicity, his gushing sympathy for those who offered their lives for their country, his utter forgetfulness of self in his concern for its welfare, could not but inspire me with confidence that he was Heaven's instrument to conduct his people through this sea of blood to a Canaan of peace and freedom."

Historian Don E. Fehrenbacher wrote of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: "In a sense, as historians fond of paradox are forever pointing out, it did not immediately liberate any slaves at all. And the Declaration of Independence, it might be added, did not immediately liberate a single colony from British rule. The people of Lincoln's time apparently had little doubt about the significance of the Proclamation. Jefferson Davis did not regard it as a mere scrap of paper, and neither did that most famous of former slaves, Frederick Douglass. He called it 'the greatest event of our nation's history.'"

Historian James M. McPherson wrote: "Lincoln left no doubt of his convictions concerning the correct definition of liberty. And as commander in chief of an army of one million men armed with the most advanced weapons in the world, he wielded a great deal of power. In April 1864 this army was about to launch offensives that would produce casualties and destruction unprecedented even in this war that brought death to more Americans than all the country's other wars combined. Yet this was done in the name of liberty — to preserve the republic 'conceived in liberty' and to bring a 'new birth of freedom' to the slaves. As Lincoln conceived it, power was the protector of liberty, not its enemy — except to the liberty of those who wished to do as they pleased with the product of other men's labor."

According to Fehrenbacher, "There are two principal measures of a free society. One is the extent to which it optimizes individual liberty of all kinds. The other is the extent to which its decision-making processes are controlled ultimately by the people; for freedom held at the will of others is too precarious to provide a full sense of being free. Self-government, in Lincoln's view, is the foundation of freedom."

Mr. Lincoln was resolved to preserve the Union. "I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my term expires, or till I die, or Congress or the country forsakes me."

Mr. Lincoln's course of action was slow but deliberate — designed to effect a permanent rather than a temporary change in the status of slavery in America. Nicolay and Hay saw that clearly: "The problem of statesmanship therefore was not one of theory, but of practice. Fame is due Mr. Lincoln, not alone because he decreed emancipation, but because events so shaped themselves under his guidance as to render the conception practical and the decree successful. Among the agencies he employed none proved more admirable or more powerful than this two-edged sword of the final proclamation, blending sentiment with force, leaguing liberty with Union, filling the voting armies at home and the fighting armies in the field. In the light of history we can see that by this edict Mr. Lincoln gave slavery its vital thrust, its mortal wound. It was the word of decision, the judgment without appeal, the sentence of doom."

Historian LaWanda Cox wrote of Mr. Lincoln's actions on emancipation "On occasion he acted boldly. More often, however, Lincoln was cautious, advancing one step at a time, and indirect, exerting influence behind the scenes. He could give a directive without appearing to do so, or even while disavowing it as such. Seeking to persuade, he would fashion an argument to fit the listener. Some statements were disingenuous, evasive, or deliberately ambiguous."

In a letter to Kentucky editor Albert G. Hodges, for example, Mr. Lincoln somewhat disingenuously said, "I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected, God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."31 Mr. Lincoln may not have controlled events, but he did a pretty good job trying to steer them.

President Lincoln: The Liberator

Mr. Lincoln himself never claimed to be a liberator — but he did believe in liberation. President Lincoln told Interior Department official T. J. Barnett in late 1862 "that the foundations of slavery have been cracked by the war, by the rebels...and the masonry of the machine is in their own hands."

The Lincoln of the White House years had deep convictions about the wrongness of slavery. But as Chief Magistrate he made a sharp distinction between his personal beliefs and his official actions. Whatever was constitutional he must support regardless of his private feelings. If the states, under the rights reserved to them, persisted in clinging to practices that he regarded as outmoded, he had no right to interfere. His job was to uphold the Constitution, not to impose his own standards of public morality.

As a constitutionalist Lincoln was dedicated to the preservation of the Union. If Lincoln had a ruling passion, it was to show the world that a government based on the principles of liberty and equality was not a passing, short-lived experiment. Up to the time of the Civil War many people, particularly in the Old World, were skeptical about the staying power of America. These doubters believed that a kingless government carried the seeds of its own destruction. Lincoln believed otherwise. He was determined that the American experiment in democracy must not fail, and that such a government by the people 'can long endure.'"

Lincoln: The Voice of the People

Historian David Potter wrote: "In the long-run conflict between deeply held convictions on one hand and habits of conformity to the cultural practices of a binary society on the other, the gravitational forces were all in the direction of equality. By a static analysis, Lincoln was a mild opponent of slavery and a moderate defender of racial discrimination. By a dynamic analysis, he held a concept of humanity which impelled him inexorably in the direction of freedom and equality."

Lincoln: The Freedom Fighter

Abolitionist Frederick Douglas understood this commitment. In his 1876 speech dedicating the Freedmen's monument in Lincoln Park east of the U.S. Capitol, Douglass said: "His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and second, to free his country form the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he needed the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow countrymen. Without those primary and essential conditions to success his efforts would have been utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. From the genuine abolition view, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent, but measuring him by the sentiment of his country — a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult — he was swift, zealous, radical and determined."

Historian Allen C. Guelzo noted: "When Frederick Douglass arrived at the White House in August, 1863, to meet Lincoln for the first time, he expected to meet a 'white man's president, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white men.' But he came away surprised to find Lincoln 'the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, or the difference of color.' The reason Douglass surmised, was 'because of the similarity with which I had fought my way up, we both starting at the lowest rung of the ladder." This, in Douglass's mind, made Lincoln 'emphatically the black man's president.'"

we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of after-coming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.

To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.

our hearts believed while they ached and bled.

We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln.

under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States;

under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months’ grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more.

and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress.

His personal traits and public acts are better known to the American people than are those of any other man of his age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his presence. Though deep, he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle; though decided and pronounce in his convictions, he was tolerant towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches. Even those who only knew him through his public utterance obtained a tolerably clear idea of his character and personality. The image of the man went out with his words, and those who read them knew him.

His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery.

The man who could say, "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,"

Lincoln: Standing Strong amongst fierce opposition

Fellow-citizens, whatever else in this world may be partial, unjust, and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just, and certain in its action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter, it is a great worker, and often works wonders. The honest and comprehensive statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time. Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often wounded in the house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast upon him from within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He was assailed by Abolitionists; he was assailed by slave-holders; he was assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was assailed for not making the war an abolition war; and he was bitterly assailed for making the war an abolition war.


But now behold the change: the judgment of the present hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single-handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave greater life, vigor, and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He was ready for any kind and any quality of work. What other young men dreaded in the shape of toil, he took hold of with the utmost cheerfulness.

"A spade, a rake, a hoe,
A pick-axe, or a bill;
A hook to reap, a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what you will."

Upon his inauguration as President of the United States, an office, even when assumed under the most favorable condition, fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the Government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the Republic.

A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him; the Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against the Republic, armed with the munitions of war which the Republic had provided for its own defense. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered and perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defense and self-preservation--a right which belongs to the meanest insect.

He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen.

His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.

Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually--we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate--for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him--but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever.

In undated notes to himself, foreshadowing the sublime Second Inaugural which Mr. Lincoln wrote: "The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party — and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true — that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants. He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."

Mr. Lincoln had no doubt about maintaining the contest until victory for "in giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free."

Douglass served as an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and fought for the adoption of constitutional amendments that guaranteed voting rights and other civil liberties for blacks. Douglass provided a powerful voice for human rights during this period of American history and is still revered today for his contributions against racial injustice.

Back in the North, Douglass attended Lincoln's second inaugural address. Standing among crowds gathered in the nation's capital, Douglass felt himself to be "a man among men." As though to prick that bubble, government officials refused to allow Douglass or any other black to attend the evening reception in the White House. But when Douglass sent word of this refusal to the president, he was quickly ushered in to the ceremony. Lincoln personally greeted him with the words, "Here comes my friend Douglass."

Widely hailed as a masterpiece of rhetoric, King's speech resembles the style of a black Baptist sermon. It appeals to such iconic and widely-respected sources as the Bible and invokes the United States Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the United States Constitution. Through the rhetorical device of allusion (defined by Campbell and Huxman (2003) as "indirect references to our shared cultural knowledge, such as the Bible, Greek and Roman mythology, or our history"), King makes use of phrases and language from important cultural texts for his own rhetorical purposes. Early in his speech King alludes to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address by saying "Five score years ago..." Biblical allusions are also prevalent. For example, King alludes to Psalm 30:5[4] in the second stanza of the speech. He says in reference to the abolition of slavery articulated in the Emancipation Proclamation, "It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity." Another Biblical allusion is found in King's tenth stanza: "No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." This is an allusion to Amos 5:24.[5] King also quotes from Isaiah 40:4 — "I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted..."

Parallelism, or "using the same initial wording in a sequence of statements or phrases in order to add emphasis, order, and climax to an idea" (Campbell & Huxman, 2002, p. 177), is a rhetorical tool employed throughout the speech. An example of parallelism is found early as King urges his audience to seize the moment: "Now is the time..." is repeated four times in the sixth stanza. The most widely cited example of parallelism is found in the often quoted phrase "I have a dream..." which is repeated eight times as King paints a picture of an integrated and unified America for his audience.

The Negro and the Constitution (in The Cornellian, May 1944)

We cannot be truly Christian people so long as we flaunt the central teachings of Jesus: brotherly love and the Golden Rule.

The spirit of Lincoln still lives; that spirit born of the teachings of the Nazarene, who promised mercy to the merciful, who lifted the lowly, strengthened the weak, ate with publicans, and made the captives free. In the light of this divine example, the doctrines of demagogues shiver in their chaff.

America experiences a new birth of freedom in her sons and daughters; she incarnates the spirit of her martyred chief. Their loyalty is repledged; their devotion renewed to the work He left unfinished. My heart throbs anew in the hope that inspired by the example of Lincoln, imbued with the spirit of Christ, they will cast down the last barrier to perfect freedom. And I with my brother of blackest hue possessing at last my rightful heritage and holding my head erect, may stand beside the Saxon--a Negro--and yet a man!

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks, before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman empire.

Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist -- "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free."

One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, and thusly, carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 1963)

Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (Dec 1964)

I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

Most of these people will never make the headlines and their names will not appear in Who's Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live -- men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization -- because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake.

Martin Luther King, Jr was a man of destiny, an apostle of peace who had risen to the lofty heights of spiritual awareness, a towering hero and historical role model whose mission in life was to serve others, one of only a few genuine prophets produced by Western Civilisation. His wisdom, words, commitment, deeds and dreams for a new cast of life were intertwined with the noblest of human aspirations; there is nothing in his life that was not joyous, and full of hope. He was a charismatic figure who attracted people by the magnificence of his concepts, and the brilliance of his insights.



Abraham Lincoln:
The Most Perfect Ruler of Men the World Has Ever Seen

Abraham Lincoln was a man led by divine guidance, a liberator of men who had risen from his underclass world to the lofty heights of presidential authority, a towering monument immortalizing the great cause of freedom. Lincoln was the shepard of his people, the Moses of his day, who led his country out of the darkness of slavery, into the wilderness of despair. Set high upon the mighty office, his conscious to bear, the fate of the Union resting on his understanding of right and fair.

"nothing can bring you peace, but the triumph of principles"- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lincoln did possess this understanding. His curiousity and appetite for learning led him to study privately, and in great detail, the works of the Bible, Aesop's Fables, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Mentor Graham, one of his schoolmasters, once commented, that Lincoln was the "most studious, diligent, straightforward young men in the pursuit of knowledge and literature" he had ever known out of five thousand students.

Lincoln's political career was fueled by his knowledge of Literature, Law and History. It affected every speech he ever made, every stand he ever took, the manner in which he wrote, and every thought he conveyed. It would equip him with every faculty needed to preserve the union and to abolish slavery.

In his early political career, Lincoln ran for the Illinois state legislature and would be defeated. However, it is the closing statement, of his first address to the public, that gives us a clearer understanding of Lincoln's foundational views. Lincoln said, "I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular friends to recommend me. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."

Lincoln knew great disappointment as well as he knew defeat. After the loss of Ann Rutledge, his childhood sweetheart, he suffered so severely that he had contemplated suicide. This sadness would remain with him throughout the course of his life. His law partner said, "If Lincoln ever had a happy day in twenty years, I never knew of it... Melancholy dripped from him as he walked."

Poverty, disappointment and defeat endowed Lincoln with empathy for his fellow man. Lincoln may have been born a white man, but he was also born and raised among the poor. One would assume, Lincoln could easily put himself in the shoes of the enslaved black men. Lincoln was known to say, on many occasions, " 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' They are just what we would be in their position."




He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen.

His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.

We have the means within us to free ourselves from the constraints of the past, which lock us into imposed roles and attitudes. By examining and understanding the past, we can move into the future unencumbered by it. We become free to express ourselves, rather than endlessly trying to prove ourselves.

On Becoming A Leader by Warren Bettis; Chapter 4 - PG 79

His visions and goals were simple, yet breathtaking in their scope, the complete liberation of mankind and the elimination of injustices. Laws which generally inhibited or prevented these objectives, simply had to change, this was the unfinished agenda, and challenge for Western democracy.

His visions and goals were simple, yet breathtaking in their scope, the complete liberation of mankind and the elimination of injustices. Laws which generally inhibited or prevented these objectives, simply had to change, this was the unfinished agenda, and challenge for Western democracy.

Whenever God is going to speak through history and I choose to defer to the feminine manifestation of God’s desire and power, whenever She is going to change history, whenever She is going to move a situation, move a nation, free a people, She sends someone to do Her work. She doesn’t enlist the services of a lobby group, She doesn’t go to a committee, She finds one special person, Abraham Lincoln to reaffirm the creed of freedom, Mahatma Gandhi to free the land of spirituality from oppression; to redeem those subjected to generations of slavery She called forth Martin Luther King and made him call out to all right minded people that now was the time to stand as tall proud unfettered men and cast off the shackles of oppression and go forth into the light of freedom.

Many religious people and those committed to social justice are strong on doctrine but light on deeds, much on creed but light on conduct, much on belief but light on behaviour, much on principle but light on practice. Martin Luther King was not so restricted, he got out and worked to free himself and his people from the shackles of unjust authority, he seized the initiative, and the day.

Martin Luther King, Jr was a preacher, moralist, a decent human being, recipient of the Noble Peace Prize who would not bow his head in apathy, or still his voice while his nation strayed from its professed reverence for justice and human life. His contributions were so dramatic and meaningful that they are universally appreciated. The entire world is the beneficiary of the efforts of this outstanding leader who brought millions of neglected and downtrodden people hope for living, and in so doing challenged the moral conscience of all people. Part of his universal appeal was that his philosophy of life was accessible, easily understood, recognised, and accepted by humanity. He challenged those committed to negativism to look inside themselves and to make brotherhood and equality a new possibility, and for others a meaningful reality.

Martin Luther King, Jr was a compassionate, honest, warm and wise individual with a clear sense of purpose, self-definition and internal balance, even today it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of his greatness. He had many gifts, including an eloquence of speech that reached out to millions of people the world over. He was dearly loved by the oppressed, and despised by those who apposed him. He called a nation, and its people, to live out the true meaning of its existence and its heritage and in so doing infused his people with pride and the necessary determination to change their world. He made the oppressed feel that they were not alone, he gave hope to the poor, friendship to the lonely, understanding to the ignorant, and helped the lost find their way. His views and thoughts were breathtaking, yet simple, his vision spanned the whole of human conduct, and he had strength born of humility; he was a man of his times, for all times, and all nations.

Martin Luther King was an eloquent and powerful speaker whose words were infused with a poetic majesty that both stunned and uplifted his audience. All who heard him speak took pride in their own self-worth, their commitment to social change and justice was rekindled and greatly deepened. A young activist described his reaction to a speech Martin Luther King gave in Boston in 1963.

‘ I left the hall to walk back down the avenue to catch a bus home, I was so filled with pride and enthusiasm, I felt as if my feet were barely touching the ground as I moved along, it was a profound personal experience that I will never forget’. 1

Martin Luther King was born into a country where practically every southern state was segregated, a divided and unequal system made up the educational, economic, political and social landscape of the Old South. Schools were segregated, restaurants were off limits to black people, and hotels had no vacancies when a black face appeared. Theatres, housing, waiting rooms, lavatories, drinking fountains, public accommodation, the queues for purchasing a dog license were segregated. This within a nation which called itself the hope for the oppressed of the world, which had declared all men equal, which had promised freedom, and equal protection for all, a nation which had built its wealth upon the backs of slaves.

He was born at noon on a cold and cloudy Saturday, January 15th 1929 at the family home in Georgia; the doctor feared him stillborn and had to spank him several times before he cried. He was the first son and second child to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. He was described as a precocious and intelligent child who pondered weighty issues and who spoke on advanced ideas that were always far beyond his years and experience. He was a child of the black middle class beginning his elementary education in Atlanta before attending Atlanta University, and then Morehouse College, completing his college education in 1953; his Ph.D. was awarded in 1955. It was during his college years he began a serious quest for a philosophical method to eliminate social evils, he read all the great philosophers. He began to ponder on what Gandhi called soul force, and the power of love and truth as a vehicle for social change. He later acknowledged his debt to Gandhi:

‘When the protest began, my mind consciously or unconsciously was driven back to the Sermon on the Mount and the Gandhian method of non violent resistance’ 1

He was acknowledged as a first rate scholar who fused the ideals and currents of his time into a worldview of liberation. He entered the Christian ministry and was ordained at the age of nineteen, after completing his studies he accepted the call of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Montgomery Alabama, where he served from 1954 until 1959.

He accepted the presidency of the Montgomery Improvement Association, it was there that he first became an orator, an advocate, an historian, a fundraiser, a field general and a symbol.

Into this environment one day in 1955, Mrs Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, tires from a long day at work, took the first vacant seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Park’s refusal to move to the back of the bus that was required of all black passengers, resulting in her arrest. Her arrest sparked that latent flame of self-worth resident in all people; it was the spark that ignited the flame that demanded an end to humiliation, intimidation and violence upon the soul and bodies of the oppressed black race of America.

In Montgomery Martin Luther King, Jr began a legacy of leadership, the cause was great; he felt a responsibility towards change, and he was not going to shirk it. He had no idea he was taking on a problem that would arouse the conscience of a nation, as a true leader he accepted the challenge and moved forward with it. The Montgomery boycott began, and he said that it was a drama of:

‘Fifty thousand who took to heart the principle of non violence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of love, and who, in the process, acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. It was a story of leaders of many faiths and divided allegiances, who came together in the bond of a cause they knew was right. And of followers, many of them beyond middle age, who walked to work and home again as much as twelve miles a day for over a year rather than submit to the discourtesies and humiliations of segregated buses…. The majority of the people who took part in the year long boycott of the Montgomery’s buses were poor and untutored; but they understood the essence of the Montgomery movement. One elderly woman summed it up for the rest. When asked after several weeks of walking whether she was tired, she answered, ‘my feet is tired, but my soul is at rest’’. 2

Martin Luther King faced a nation that had been founded and governed by a people who had insisted on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and freedom for all. Martin Luther King believed in the message of the founding fathers of the American constitution, and saw his country as a covenant whose peoples’ bonding was fundamentally established in the Declaration of Independence:

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings are created equal; that their Creator endows them, with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’.

He said that America could not be true to this vision and to the very basis of the founding of the nation until this fundamental right applied to all, equally and to fulfil the promise and the dream of true democracy. In seeking to accomplish this he committed himself to the dignity of every human being, even to those who considered themselves to be his enemies, he believed that even they had dignity as human beings worthy of his respect, despite the error of their ways.

In 1955 with the Montgomery boycott the national and international work of Martin Luther King began. It was to last thirteen turbulent years, during which time he was to raise his voice against the forces of evil and so forever change the course of his nation.

He strode forth in the quest for social justice and racial equality, yet knew that he would never enter upon the final road. He was prepared to sacrifice his life for the struggle, and central to this struggle was his commitment to change the nature of public opinion in America. Martin Luther King was able to change the terms of debate in America and won overwhelming support not only throughout his nation, but throughout the world as he marched upon the road for social justice and impartiality, reaffirming the dream that all people are created equal.

He enabled people to stand against racial injustice and brutality and so make the forces of darkness give ground and yield to those of justice. He seared into mankind’s consciousess the idea of going all out for one’s beliefs, he lifted the spirits of the oppressed to heights never before experienced, enabling them to take pride in their lives. While stimulating pride amongst the negroes of America, Martin Luther King made it clear that we all share a human and moral responsibility to join hands as brothers and sisters in the quest for social justice. He preached, and practised, a philosophy of racial integration, and would not give ground when faced with the call for separatism. He said:

When I speak of integration I don’t mean a romantic mixing of colours, I mean a real sharing of power and responsibility. 3

During his years at college he had been inspired by the words and deeds of Mahatma Gandhi and his struggle to free India of British colonialism. Gandhi was probably the most important intellectual and emotional influence on his life, what inspired him was how someone could fuse his own deprivations into a social movement to liberate a people. He developed a belief and a strong commitment to non-violence that became the basis of his plea to his country to put aside the shackles of racism and segregation. In 1959 in a stirring plea to his followers he argues the cause of non-violence:

‘I am convinced that the method of non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom and human dignity. Therefore, I have advised all along that we follow a path of non- violence, because if we ever succumb to the temptation of using violence in our struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of the long and desolate night of bitterness’. 3

His views of non-violence as a positive expression of soul force was a revolutionary initiative as he moved to confronting the status quo while refusing to accept lawful injustice. Martin Luther King said that if one passively cooperated with an evil and unjust system, such cooperation would make the oppressed as evil as the oppressor. He said:

‘I do not want to give the impression that non- violence will work miracles overnight. Men are not easily moved from mental ruts or purged of their prejudice and irrational feelings. When the underprivileged demand freedom, the privileged first react with bitterness and resistance. Even when the demands are couched in non-violent terms, the initial response is the same... The non-violent approach does not immediately change the hearts of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them a new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.’ 2

Martin Luther King had difficulty convincing his followers to commit to the course of non-violence, many said that they had been slapped on both cheeks and kicked on the other two, and they had no more cheeks to turn. He replied:

‘Violence must never come from any of us. If we become victimised with violent acts or intent, the pending daybreak of promise will be transformed into a gloomy midnight of retrogress’.2

His mission went beyond breaking the walls of segregation in America, he addressed the need to break the walls of isolation existing between all racial, ethnic and religious groups. He said:

‘Like life, racial understanding is not something that we find, but something that we must create. The ability to work together, to understand each other will not be found ready-made; it must be created by the fact of contact’.3

Society has made us feel uncomfortable and fearful of people from different racial and ethnic groups. He opened people’s eyes to the rainbow of diversity amongst humanity and believed in the essential goodness of mankind. He preached that racial integration begins with each individual and asked that this be the new song that we sing and live out in our lives. As a prophet he travelled across a country in conflict with itself, and spoke to all that listened, he spoke to the country about its most crippling and dangerous disease – racism, in courageous and challenging words he told his country:

‘It is time for all of us to tell each other the truth about who and what have brought the Negro to the condition of deprivation against which he struggles today. In human relations the truth is hard to come by, because most groups are deceived about themselves. Rationalisation and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our individual and collective sins. But the day has passed for bland euphemisms He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery’.2

In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr was taken to jail in the aftermath of the Birmingham confrontation with the municipal authorities, and in particular with the Public Safety Commissioner Mr ‘Bull’ Connor. Negroes of the city instituted peaceful demonstrations into the heart of downtown Birmingham and were subjected to beatings, hosings, and the unleashing of police dogs. Martin Luther King was criticised by a group of white clergymen who blamed him for precipitating the violence, he penned a subdued, but passionate letter of reply to his colleagues, smuggling it out on toilet tissue, the margins of newspapers, indeed any scrap of paper available to him. Rather than giving in to despair his letters offer an eloquent testimony to the flaming moral concern for oppressed humanity that was his life’s work and legacy.

Most people sent to prison find despair, agony and long for release, yet he was at peace with himself and wrote prose that even now comes down to us as the highest, purest poetry. What has become known as the ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’’ ranks among the most important American documents written (the text of the Birmingham letter is appended).

The atmosphere he created in 1963 with the great marches and demonstrations aroused the conscious of America and then in June, John F. Kennedy asked Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act.

In 1963 Martin Luther King led a march to Washington on the eve of the vote by the National Congress on the new legislation, which would become the Magna Carta for the Negro race. The march attracted hundreds of thousands of people who went with him to Washington and has been described as one of democracies finest hours. On the steps at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th he outlined his dream of his nation, his address to the nation through television and radio, now known as ‘I have a Dream’, is accepted as one of the finest addresses ever delivered to a public audience (the text of the speech is appended below).

He used the occasion to remind Americans of the unfilled promise in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, just as 1863 had been an occasion for Lincoln’s generation to remember the unfulfilled promised of the Declaration of Independence of 1776. He described a just society that aims to narrow the gap between the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor, which is always under threat by those who see it as an obstacle to some private interest.

Martin Luther King, Jr started and became the Civil Rights Movement. His concept of somebodiness gave black and poor people a new sense of worth and dignity. He reached in and tapped what Carl Jung called our ‘collective unconscious’, the universal aspiration for the well being of all people. His philosophy of non-violent direct action, and his strategies for rational and non-destructive social change, galvanised the conscience of his nation and helped reorder its priorities.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 went to Congress as a direct result of the March he organised and led from Selma to Montgomery and precipitated the fall of the Southern theory on racial separation. Why did he lead his march to Montgomery? During the Civil War the southern capital was first located in Richmond, Virginia, but was considered too far north and it was moved to Montgomery. Martin Luther King wanted to lead the march into the centre of the age-old heart of the Confederacy. One who took part in the march describes the experience:

‘The Selma March on March 25th, 1965 was the most democratic scene I had ever experienced in this country. It was just an exhilarating day that people were laughing and crying for once the word of ‘We shall overcome’ were changed to ‘We have overcome’. There was euphoria, there was exuberance. It was a multicultural day. It was really a sense that there were no more mountains to climb. And then I think that we were too unaware in our naivete of exactly what had been tapped, something told us that the old order had forever changed.’5

Martin Luther King played a pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott, the struggle for integrated education, the destruction of racial barriers in the public services, the fight for voters’ rights, the movement of better housing and the rights of workers for decent wagers, ensuring success in the destruction of legal and traditional barriers of human dignity.

Some of his critics suggested that the plight of the Negro was his own fault and that preferential treatment and special rights were a form of reverse discrimination, no better than the discrimination he said he was fighting against. He answered:

‘It would be neither true nor honest to say that the Negro’s status is what it is because he is innately inferior or because he is basically lazy and listless, or because he has not sought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. Such thinking is a myth and it is of no use to cite comparisons with other races; there is no parallel. No other group was brought here in bondage. The Negro must have help to win his rightful place.. And there is no section of the country that can discuss the matter of brotherhood with clean hands’.2

In every age, every generation, every country, the forces of Hate supported by unknown and unseen power spawns and parades the erroneous, discredited and malicious racist. Strangely they are found at every level in society from the great universities the so called bastions of open-mindedness where racism may be couched in the soft tones of sociology and psychology, from the judiciary, from the police force who choose to term communities ghettos, through to the highest circles of government. But we all know that racism is racism and is evil in all its forms, no matter how it is marketed, or from whom and whence it comes; its poison is still the same, nearly incurable, leaving a deep scar upon the mind public.

Martin Luther King spoke bluntly to those who upheld the racist ethos:

‘It lies in the ‘congenital deformity’ of racism that has crippled the nation since its inception …. No one surveying the moral landscape of our nation can overlook the hideous and pathetic wreckage of commitment twisted and turned to a thousand shapes under the stress of prejudice and irrationality.

This does not imply that all white Americans are racists – far from it. Many white people have, through a deep moral compulsion, fought long and hard for racial justice. … However, for the good of America, it is necessary to refute the idea that the dominant ideology in our country even today is freedom and equality while racism is just an occasional departure from the norm on the part of a few bigoted extremists ….

Racism is based on the dogma ‘that the hope of civilisation depends upon eliminating some races and keeping others pure’, its ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler, in his mad and ruthless attempt to exterminate the Jews, carried the logic of racism to its ultimate and tragic conclusions. While America has not literally sought to eliminate the Negro in this final sense, it has, through the system of segregation, substituted a subtle reduction of life by means of deprivation …

Racism is a philosophy based on contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the centre of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission’. 3

Towards the end of his life Martin Luther King, Jr moved beyond the issue of civil rights and racism, and sounded a call for the eradication of poverty, a cessation of exploitation. He demanded entry into doors of opportunity, sought a seat in the halls of power, argued for a redefinition, and a realignment of the relationship between class and power in America. He said:

‘The real cost lies ahead. The stiffening white resistance is recognition of that fact. The discount education given Negroes will in the future have to be purchased at full price if equality education is to be realised. Jobs are harder and costlier than voting rolls. The eradication of slums housing millions is complex far beyond integrating buses and lunch counters … Laws are passed in crisis mood after a Birmingham or a Selma, but no substantial fervour survives the formal signing of legislation. The recording of the law itself is treated as the reality of the reform … The practical cost of change for the nation up to this point has been cheap. The limited reforms have been obtained at bargain rates. There are no expenses, and no taxes required, for Negroes to share lunch counters, libraries, parks, hotels and other facilities with whites. Even the psychological adjustment is far from formidable’.3

Much of the nation was able to adjust to the black man’s struggle against the overt cruelty and the excesses of brutality imposed them. Many in the community registered outrage against the indecent social treatment of black people and supported legislation enshrining all peoples civil rights and liberties yet these very same people found no emotional outlet in the fight for economic and political equality. Indeed some perceived this persistence for meaningful equality as ingratitude.

When he addressed the issue of poverty and the creation of an underclass most white Americans, feeling that enough had been done, retreated from the struggle, and many joined the oppressor against black entry. He addressed this view in a portion of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

‘I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder … I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life which surrounds him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood could never become a reality,,, I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood flowing streets of our nation, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centred men have torn down, other–centered men can build up.

I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and non-violent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.’3

The reason Martin Luther King, Jr had to die is no mystery. He bridged the communication gap that separates struggling people that permits the greedy and the insensitive to rule. He enabled the poor and disadvantaged to form workable coalitions and showed they had a common interest in issues of inflation, unemployment, inequitable taxation, inadequate health care, education, crime, housing and corruption. Such matters affect millions of people across all sections of the community.

Martin Luther King travelled many roads, he went to arid reservations, to the barrios, to the urban ghettos, to the rural countryside, to the poor of all colour and asked why the affluent live insulated and isolated alongside the poor. He began to work to organise the poor of all colours and all kinds to demand economic justice and to challenge the unfair distribution of wealth, he raised questions people did not want to hear, and could not answer. By questioning the distribution of wealth and the plight of the poor he questioned the very basis of the American system and in so doing became a much greater threat and earned him the enmity of those in power.

Martin Luther King’s life is filled with missed opportunities, it would clearly be an error to claim that some significant progress has not taken place, and yet much more could have been achieved; this derives from society’s fundamental rejection of the appeals of conscience, and non violent action, which had been generated and promoted by Martin Luther King and others. Expectation of social justice remain unfulfilled, fundamental processes that govern the distribution of wealth and opportunity continue to be abused by misshapen motives

No more eloquent testimony to his life can be found than in the fact that he died working in the cause of predominantly black garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee. He was there because he believed they had a dignity worthy of the respect of their employers and fellow citizens, despite their station in life. He was born privileged, he didn’t have to champion the cause of the poor, he choose to cast his lot with the poor and devote all that he had to the cause of justice. He was on his way to Washington to lobby for the nation to deliver on the Declaration’s promise of an inalienable right to life for the poor and the excluded.

In his final sermon in Memphis, the night before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr described the situation in terms of the parable of the Good Samaritan. He said the reason one passed by the man who had been beaten and robbed is because they asked the wrong question:

‘If I help this man, what will happen to me?’

The good man stopped to help because he asked the right question:

‘If I don’t help this man, what will happen to him?’

Martin Luther King had a profound understanding of the intrinsic value of the relationship between justice and peace and knew that there could not be an equitable settlement as long as injustice and inequality prevailed, he worked and gave his life trying to realise this dream.

The country killed Martin Luther King as nations always kill their prophets, the federal government of the day through the FBI and other agencies, encouraged – indeed call for – his death – in a sense pulling the trigger.

When we review his life and death it is appropriate to draw inspiration from the life and leadership of one whose vision and commitments remain unparalleled in modern America. It is important to review how he wished to be remembered:

‘If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize, which isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards, that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I’d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr tried to love somebody. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind’.3

True to his word he left behind a committed life, a life committed to the struggle for justice. When we read his words, and ponder the life of one such as Martin Luther King we cannot help but feel uplifted, our hearts filled with a sense of joy.

In our society a citizen’s contribution is usually measured by the amount of power, or wealth they accumulate, past figures such as Edison, Ford and recently Gates, have been widely admired, but their memory is never as revered, nor as cherished as one such as Martin Luther King, Jr, and this tells us something of the human condition. We cherish those who are close to heaven, those whom the darkness cannot reach, those who give our aspiration wings to fly and lead us once again to a higher and nobler destiny. It is the visionaries, the men of peace who universally touch something deep within us, and our lives and society are forever altered by their presence.

Martin Luther King’s life tells us that the socialisation of our youth must also radically change if they are not to become dysfunctional human beings. Our responsibility is to change this condition in our society, and this change must begin with each of us. We should ask, what does his message mean to me, are we living our life engaged or disengaged from people with different racial, ethnic and religious identities? His life rings with a clarion call to act, we are not spectators, life is not a show and we the audience, quite the contrary, we are placed onto the stage of history, and God is the audience, and incumbent upon each of us is the need to do something, even if at times it appears difficult. The progress we make is not entirely due to our own effort and those around us, despite the obstacles before us and in addition to our efforts, God is just and works with those who work for the good of all people, She did not bring human kind this far just to leave us behind.

We can make a difference if we broaden the circle of our relationships and friendships, seeking the fulfilment of all that is good and decent within us, awakening latent possibilities and potential and travel the path towards self-actualisation, self-realisation, self-knowledge. Our lives should become part of a widening circle of meaning, not narrowing, as we develop ethically, morally, spiritually, and in our own way contributing to the changing of the social fabric in our communities.

The lives of the great souls of the Earth remind each one of us that we can also make our lives sublime, and leave behind us something of worth in the sands of time.

His contemporaries said of him:

‘We should keep in mind Martin Luther King’s kinship with the native American literary and political traditions. It reminds us how much of his power as a leader derived from his command of the language, a capacity for thought and expression and speech that connects him with such gifted writers and speakers on behalf of freedom, as Frederick Douglas or Abraham Lincoln, or Emerson and Thoreau. When you think of leaders like King and Lincoln you realise how much of their power to lead did in fact stem from their power of language, their gift of expression and communication. Martin Luther King is symbolic figure who connects us with the best, the most hopeful and generous, and most human aspects of our past’.1

‘The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr to us is an abiding faith in the possibilities of America and the promised of a just God. Despite the forces around and sometimes inside him conspiring to provoke alienation and despair, Martin Luther King, Jr loved America and gave his life to help the nation be true to its covenant of freedom and equality. God did not bring us this far to leave us behind’. 4

‘.. some were lured by the fire and the idealism which he brought to all that he did, one of the key legacies of Martin Luther King was that he spoke so eloquently of his patriotism, his love of country, and then, out of that patriotism, talked about some of the fundamental contradictions that we had to address in a democratic society’.5

‘I classify Martin Luther King, Jr as the second Emancipator, the first was Abraham Lincoln, at the conclusion of the Civil War. Martin Luther King, Jr was the catalyst for the second Emancipation. The forces of history helped him by converging at a significant moment, it was the zeitgeist, or spirit of time, King was the catalysts in creating the spirit of the time’.6

‘.. he articulated a radical, ethical doctrine that social justice, racial equality, and economic reform were achievable in our society through successful appeal to the conscience of the individual. He believed that despite the accretion of a historical experience that reaches back two and half centuries of slavery, it is possible to ascend to a higher plane in human relations without violence or other forms of coercive force’.1

‘ We can create the beloved community that Martin envisioned. Let us now dare to embrace this common vision and mobilise all our resources to bring it into being. Let us build a society based on hope, and let us not only dream, but create a new national unity, unburdened by bigotry and strengthened by a conscious commitment to prosperity through interracial brotherhood and sisterhood’ – Coretta Scott King 1994

Martin Luther King, Jr led a courageous life committed to the spirit of change, perhaps the revolution required today is not so much for social change but an inner revolution of the spirit where we find meaning for our lives, where we reject the easy road of apathy and indifference, where we reject materialism, substance abuse and all of the other selfish concerns which contribute to a pervasive sense of alienation, despair, and a sense of hopelessness which is pervading our society. Everything is connected, these problems are interconnected.

We need to actively work for a just society through an integrated sense of being, but we cannot afford to just wait for the day when it finally becomes a reality. We need to begin to live and work together with the faith that we are all brothers and sisters in the great human family and where each of us leads decent lives and through self-realisation attain our own inner peace and harmony; we should settle for nothing less. Now is the time and the way has been found for those who truly seek it.

To end … who can view the scene without a shiver running up the spine of Martin Luther King, Jr pulling himself to his full height to proclaim to the world that he was not going to let anybody turn him around. And with faith in his people and a relentless pursuit of their God given rights, we all will be able to join hands and say together,

‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are Free at last’