a people’s contest
unfettered start, a fair chance
in the race of life
This is essentially a people’s contest.
On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men;
to lift artificial weights from all shoulders;
to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all;
to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.
President Abraham Lincoln’s special message to Congress, July 4, 1861.
Known as the The Fourth of July that Could Have Wrecked the Country, Mr. Lincoln explained his views and plans to keep the United States with Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.
Oddly prescient, Mr. Lincoln said:
It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion;
that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets,
and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets;
that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections.
Such will be a great lesson of peace,
teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war;
teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.
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