The eternal meaning of Independence Day
"On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech
to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago.
Abraham Lincoln was in the audience as Douglas prepared to speak.
Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen
to the speech.
Douglas responded to Lincoln’s condemnation of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott
decision — a condemnation that was the centerpiece of Lincoln’s
convention speech. “I am free to say to you,” Douglas said, “that in my
opinion this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was
made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be
administered by white men, in such manner as they should determine.”
Lincoln invited Douglas’s audience to return the next evening for his reply to Douglas’s speech. Lincoln’s speech of July 10, 1858,
is one of his many great speeches, but in one respect it is uniquely
great. It concludes with an explanation of the meaning of this day to
Americans with incomparable eloquence and insight in words that remain
as relevant now as then......."
[Power Line]
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