This quote is either a West African Proverb, or a quote from the Dalai Lama XIV, or someone else...
But it doesn’t really matter.
It is true.
And it is what we might keep in mind, going into the single most important presidential election in the United States, since this guy:
YOU can make a difference in THIS election.
Find out what.
Then do it.
Joseph R. Biden is a very good man. He is also an old man. He is also wise. And kind. And generous.
He has done, in less than four years, more than most presidents did in eight.
If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been paying attention.
So pay attention.
And get off yer ass.
www.whitehouse.gov/...
Lincoln's re-election ensured that he would preside over the successful conclusion of the Civil War. Lincoln's victory made him the first president to win re-election since Andrew Jackson in 1832, as well as the first Northern president to ever win re-election.
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As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. Further, he rallied most of the northern Democrats to the Union cause. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy.
Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg:
“that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Lincoln won re-election in 1864, as Union military triumphs heralded an end to the war. In his planning for peace, the President was flexible and generous, encouraging Southerners to lay down their arms and join speedily in reunion.
The spirit that guided him was clearly that of his Second Inaugural Address, now inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C.:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds…. ”