"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Here's the whole thing, in what has become known as the "Bliss" version, the one that hangs on the wall of the Lincoln Room in the White House: But he makes a good case here for freedom and equality as a basis for unity. He was not a saint, he was probably as most whites were in the nineteenth century, racist for a good portion of his life. He didn't always think that blacks were "equal" to whites. He had, over time, to come to this position, that all humans should be free, as some are still struggling to acknowledge, apparently. We all know now that Lincoln was not always opposed to slavery. On this day, November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln, in order to dedicate the Gettysburg National Cemetery, delivered this address. The first real challenge to the country was the Civil War, and January 6 marks to me the second, though there may in fact have been many more. I am in DC, where for the first time in decades I stood near the Capitol steps and visited the Lincoln Memorial, where I read this address again as it is engraved on the wall.
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