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"There are already among us those, who, if the 
Union be preserved, will live to see it contain 
two hundred and fifty millions of population. The 
struggle of to-day is not altogether for to-day: it is 
for a vast future also.”

- Abraham Lincoln 

From: The president's words : a selection of passages from the speeches, addresses, and letters of Abraham Lincoln
https://archive.org/details/presidentswords00lincrich/page/118/mode/1up
Source says not in copyright 

By the early 1990s the population of The United States surpassed 250 million people.  

Image via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
Allan Pinkerton, President Abraham Lincoln, and Major General John A. McClernand

- Antietam, 1862

via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
"That is the electric cord in the Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together..."

Read more: 
https://heartfelthistory.com/we-hold-these-truths/
"Here, without contemplating consequences, before Heaven, and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love; and who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take?”

- Abraham Lincoln c. 1839

Image via NYPL Digital Collections, no known restrictions
Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President. Seated portrait, facing front, January 8th, 1864

via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
"I was raised to farm work, at which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of a clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War, and I was elected a captain of volunteers a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went into the campaign, was elected, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten the only time I have ever been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During the legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was elected to the Lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics, and generally on the Whig electoral ticket, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known. 

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am in height six feet four  inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred,  eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes no other marks or brands recollected. 

Yours, very truly, Abraham Lincoln”

From: Words of Lincoln, including several hundred opinions of his life and character by eminent persons of this and other lands. Published in 1895
https://archive.org/details/wordsoflincolnin00lincrich/page/40/mode/1up
Source says not in copyright 

Image of Abraham Lincoln c. 1860 via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
"Gold is good in its place; but living, brave, and patriotic men are better than gold." 

- Abraham Lincoln 

Image: rare photograph of Abraham Lincoln via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
Lincoln statue, Park Square, Boston, Mass.

- Early 1900s

via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
Image of the Lincoln Family sometime after the death of Willie Lincoln (portrait on the wall) in 1862.

via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
"Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history.”

- Abraham Lincoln from his Second State of The Union Address on December 1st, 1862 

Image of Abraham Lincoln via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Lincoln as a boy reading at night 

When Abraham Lincoln was a boy in 1816, his family left Kentucky and moved to Indiana.
1816 was the same year that Indiana entered the Union.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
"Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the revolution. Think nothing of me — take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever — but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. 
You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of Humanity — the Declaration of American Independence.”

- Abraham Lincoln in 1858

From: Selected writings of Abraham Lincoln
https://archive.org/details/selectedwritings01linc/page/101/mode/2up
Source says not in copyright 

Image of Abraham Lincoln c. 1864 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Photograph of Abraham Lincoln just a few months before he made his famous Gettysburg Address in November 1863.

via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Abraham Lincoln and Family 

- 1861

via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln from October, 1858

via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
"May I be pardoned, if, upon this occasion, I mention, that away back in my childhood — the earliest days of my being able to read — I got hold of a small book, such a one as few of the younger members have ever seen, 'Weems Life of Washington’ ; I remember all the accounts there given of the battlefields and struggles for the liberties of the country, and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton. The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hessians, the great hardships endured at that time, all fixed themselves on my memory more than any single Revolutionary event; and you all know, for you have all been (children), how these early impressions last longer than any other. 

I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for.

I am exceedingly anxious that that thing which they struggled for — that something even more than National independence, that something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world for all time to come — I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people, shall be perpetuated in 
accordance with the original idea for which that 
struggle was made, and I shall be most happy, indeed, if I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his most chosen people, for perpetuating the object of the great struggle.”

- Abraham Lincoln, Address in the Senate Chamber, Trenton, N.J., February 21, 1861.

From: The Words of Lincoln, published in 1895 
https://archive.org/details/wordsoflincoln00linc/page/61/mode/2up
Source says not in copyright 

Image: Profile image of Abraham Lincoln c. 1863 via Library of Congress, no known restrictions
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