October 3

"We all declare for liberty...but we do not all mean the same thing. With some...the word 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- different and incompatible- liberty and tyranny."

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President, 1861-1865- From an Address at a Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland, April 18, 1864- Lincoln makes a short speech in Baltimore a just about a year before the War ended on April 9, 1865. He speaks at what became known as a Sanitary Fair. When it became evident that the Federal government was unable to provide for the needs of its army, expositions were organized by private citizens in many cities to raise funds to improve the living conditions of Union soldiers in the field and to help supply hospitals. The largest one of its kind may have been the Philadelphia Fair which ran from June 7, 1864 to June 28, 1864. http://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/civil-war-sanitary-fairs/ In Lincoln's Baltimore address, he remarks on the changes the nation and the city of Baltimore had undergone in the past three years of the war. Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and now freed and escaped slaves were fighting for the Union Army. In Lincoln's eyes, the war was originally and primarily fought to keep the Union together. The issue of slavery had been a point of dispute and contention from the very beginning of the revolution and inception of the nation. Lincoln opposed slavery and had finally found a way gain widespread political approval to abolish the institution. Here he speaks of Liberty: "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 incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated." http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/address-at-a-sanitary-fair/