U.K. Plaque honors Abraham Lincoln

[David Lockmiller]

History repeats itself:

“I have never professed an indifference to the honors of official station; and were I to do so now, I should only make myself ridiculous. Yet I have never failed---do not now fail---to remember that in the republican cause there is a higher aim than that of mere office. I have not allowed myself to forget that the abolition of the Slave-trade by Great Britain, was agitated a hundred years before it was a final success; that the measure had it's open fire-eating opponents; it's stealthy "don’t care'' opponents; it's dollar and cent opponents; it's inferior race opponents; its negro equality opponents; and its religion and good order opponents; that all these opponents got offices, and their adversaries got none. But I have also remembered that though they blazed, like tallow-candles for a century, at last they flickered in the socket, died out, stank in the dark for a brief season, and were remembered no more, even by the small. School-boys know that Wilbe[r]force, and Granville Sharpe [sic], helped that cause forward; but who can now name a single man who labored to retard it? Remembering these things I cannot but regard it as possible that the higher object of this contest may not be completely attained within the term of my natural life. But I cannot doubt either that it will come in due time. Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see.”

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 2.

Robert Todd Lincoln, in presenting the fragment to the Duchess of St. Albans, wrote on September 17, 1892: ``The MS. is a note made in preparing for one of the speeches in the joint-debate Campaign between Mr. Douglas & my father in 1858.'' (Parke-Bernet Catalog No. 908, December 9, 1947, p. 126.)

The actual transcript facsimile is in Holzer’s book, In Lincoln's Hand: His Original Manuscripts with Commentary by Distinguished Americans, at pages 54-55.