♫ Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" ♫
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."
That is what he said.
That is what Abraham Lincoln said.
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history."
"We of this congress and this administration
will be remembered in spite of ourselves.
No personal significance or insignificance
can spare one or another of us.
The fiery trial through which we pass
will light us down in honor or dishonor
to the latest generation.
We, even we here, hold the power
and bear the responsibility."
♫
He was born in Kentucky,
raised in Indiana,
and lived in Illinois.
And this is what he said.
This is what Abe Lincoln said.
"The dogmas of the quiet past
are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty
and we must rise with the occasion.
As our case is new,
so we must think anew and act anew.
We must disenthrall ourselves and then
we shall save our country."
♫
When standing erect
he was six feet four inches tall,
and this is what he said.
He said: "It is the eternal struggle
between two principles, right and wrong,
throughout the world.
It is the same spirit that says
'you toil and work and earn bread,
and I'll eat it.'
No matter in what shape it comes,
whether from the mouth of a king
who seeks to bestride the people
of his own nation, and live by
the fruit of their labor,
or from one race of men as an
apology for enslaving another race,
it is the same tyrannical principle."
♫
Lincoln was a quiet man.
Abe Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man.
But when he spoke of democracy,
this is what he said.
He said:
"As I would not be a slave,
so I would not be a master.
This expresses my idea of democracy.
Whatever differs from this,
to the extent of the difference,
is no democracy."
♫
Abraham Lincoln,
sixteenth president of these United States,
is everlasting in the memory of his countrymen.
For on the battleground at Gettysburg,
this is what he said:
He said:
"That from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
That we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain.
And that this nation under God shall have
a new birth of freedom
and that government of the people,
by the people, and for the people
shall not perish from the earth."
♫