...after all, for good or ill, have a hand in choosing their destinies. "Fellow-citizens," he warned, "we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and...light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."38 If one detects here a conflict in Lincoln's history between individual responsibility...

...December i, Lincoln tried to summarize the progress of the war and its shifting goals. "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and...pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how...

...I beg to state that we cannot hope to escape History, who will be after us with a very sharp stick. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. My own hopes of being spared on the latter count are consequently dashed, in which I share a disappointment...

...difficult, but our only real option is to act. Over a century ago in another conflict Lincoln said, "We cannot escape history. We of this Congress and...down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation." Those same words apply to us here today. A century ago, Britain stood majestically at the height of...

...presidency gave Lincoln's mind still more ease in this respect. "Fellow-citizens," he said in 1862, "we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and...light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."40 To Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton he read aloud Fitz-Greene Halleck's poem "Marco...

...from Lincoln's message to the nation in 1862, the first year of another American war: Fellow Citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and...The fiery trial through which we pass will light us .... in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. Eighty years after Lincoln delivered that message,...

...is new, so must we think anew and act anew. . . . Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. . . . The fiery trial through which we pass, will light...honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. . . . We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth. . . . The way ... if followed, the...

...as he guided it. "We cannot escape history," Lincoln told his countrymen at the height of the war. "The fiery trial through which we pass, will light...down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. ... In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give,...

...linking past, present, and future in a passage of unsurpassed eloquence and power: Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and...administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves.... The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.......

...Abraham Lincoln advised a beleaguered North in December 1862, "Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us." If we do not learn from history, we are fated to learn the lessons again. What then is this beyond...