[Peace-discuss] young Lincoln on R3volution --

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Lincoln said this.  The question is if he rejected it or carried it out 
on a grand scale.


Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right 
to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one 
that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right--a 
right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this 
right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing 
government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that 
can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as 
they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people 
may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near 
about them, who may oppose this movement. Such minority was precisely 
the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of 
revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both, 
and make new ones.

 

Abraham Lincoln

January 12, 1848.