Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 May 1888 — Lincoln’s Immortal Phrase. [ARTICLE]

Lincoln’s Immortal Phrase.

C. C. R. has heard the originality of Lincoln’s famous phrase, “Of the people, by the people and for the people,” called in question, and asks the tjossip to enlighten him. This phrase, as everyone knows, occurs in Abraham Lincoln’s address at tta dedication of the National Cemetery at Getty burg on Nov. 19, 1863. Tbe text of the,sentence is as follows: “We here highly resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain, that the nation shall, under Cod, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The phrase was not original but a quotation conscious or unconscious, from Theodore Parker. In an address to the Anti-Slavery Society, May 13, 1854 (printed in “Additional Speeches,” vol. IL, page 25), the great Abolitionist spoke of democracy as a government of all tbe people, by all the people and for all the people.” A lady who was a member of his household for many years says that the phrase, though the result of long and careful hammering at a favorite thought, even yet failed to satisfy him. “It was not,” she says, “quite pointed enough for the weapon he needed to use so often in criticising the national action, to pierce and penetrate the mind of the hearer and reader with the just idea of democracy, securing it there by much iteration; and I can distinctly recall his joyful look when he afterward read it to me in his library condensed into this gem: ‘Of the people, by the people and for the people.’ ” But even Parker was not original. As early as 1830 Daniel Webster had used these "words in a public speech: “The people’s government, made for the people, made by the people and answerable to the people.” And here is how the same idea was handled by Chief Justice Marshall as far back as 1819: “The govenment of the Union is emphatically and truly a government of the people. In form and substance it emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them and for their benefit.” (McCullough vs. Maryland; reported in 4 Wheaton, 316.) — L ipp in co tVs Mag az ine.