4 March 2023, Gaylord National Resort, Maryland, USA
Well, thank you very much and I’m thrilled to be back at CPAC with thousands of great and true American patriots, and that’s what you are. I want to start by thanking Matt and Mercedes Schlapp and everyone at the American Conservative Union. Thank you, Matt, for hosting this wonderful event. It really has been something over the years. I also want to, we have so many people here, I’m going to leave out some, but they’ll understand. We have a lot of Congress, a lot of Senate, a lot of everything, but we’ll do a few words and a few names. Diana Harshbarger, thank you, Diana, Congresswoman. Mike Collins, Elise Stefanik, I call her the rocket ship. Where is Elise? She’s a rocket. Thank you, Elise. Jason Smith, a friend of mine, great guy. Thank you, Jason. Wesley Hunt, Cory Mills, Dr. Ronny Jackson. He’s a doctor, he’s an admiral. Where’s Ronny Jackson? He said I’m the healthiest man ever to be president by far. Said, if I wouldn’t eat junk food, I’d live 200 years. Where is he? He’s the greatest. We love you, Ronny.
(01:25)
He had a lot of things under his belt. Another one who’s a serious character, but a great guy. You got to know him. He’s a great guy. Matt Gates. Where’s Matt? Thank you, Matt. Great guy. He’s a brave guy. And another brave person, she started off very slow, very, very slow. She’s a low-key person, Marjorie Taylor Greene. Where is Marjorie? Thank you. Thank you, Marjorie. A good location, Marge. A friend of mine, a man who’s terrific, almost won for governor of New York. Could have done it, but so many people have moved out of New York, it gets tougher. But he’s a terrific guy, a great lawyer too, and he is a strong guy. He stopped somebody coming at him with a knife. I don’t know. He grabbed that guy’s hand, he looked pretty tough, and he drove him to the ground. Lee Zeldin, where’s Lee? Where’s Lee? Hi, Lee. Thank you. Good job, Lee. West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrissey. Patrick, thank you, Patrick. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick.
(02:39)
Ohio attorney general Dave Yost. Thank you, Dave. Former acting attorney general of the United States, Matt Whitaker, Matt. A friend of mine who knows the border, knows more about illegal immigration than the next 10 people combined, Stephen Miller. Steven, hi, Steve. Great, good to have you here. One of my favorite generals, a guy who’s just great. He’s got a lot of common sense and a lot of smarts. And he’s been doing a lot of television lately and he does a fantastic job, General Keith Kellogg. Thank you, Keith. A very popular man in South America, very, very popular in Brazil, the former president of Brazil. President Bolsonaro, a great honor.
(03:41)
I don’t know, you beat all these US politicians. That’s pretty good. And his son, who’s a friend of mine, Brazilian chamber of deputies, Eduardo Bolsonaro. Hi, Eduardo. Great job you’re doing. Just got reelected. And somebody that we really like in this room, I think. I certainly like a lot. He had a lot of courage, very smart guy, James O’Keefe. Where’s James? Where is James? Thank you, James. Good guy. As we gather today, our country and our movement, the greatest political movement in the history of our country, as nobody going to even question it, even the fake news media. That’s a lot of fake news back there. And by the way, I want to thank the fire department. Look at these people. They’re up the rafters. Thank you, fire department. But the greatest in our history, most important battle in our lives is taking place right now as we speak. For seven years, you and I have been engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it.
(05:25)
The sinister forces trying to kill America have done everything they can to stop me, to silence you, and to turn this nation into a socialist dumping ground for criminals, junkies, Marxists, thugs, radicals, and dangerous refugees that no other country wants. No other country wants them. If those opposing us succeed, our once beautiful USA will be a failed country that no one will even recognize. A lawless, open borders, crime-ridden, filthy, communist nightmare. That’s what it’s going and that’s where it’s going. I used to say that we will never be a socialist country. I said it oftentimes. I said it once at the State of the Union address and people didn’t understand what I was saying. But I’d shout it out loud and I was right because that train has passed the station long ago of socialism. It never even came close to stopping, frankly.
(06:26)
We’re now in a Marxism state of mind, a communism state of mind, which is far worse. We’re a nation in decline. Our enemies are desperate to stop us because they know that we are the only ones who can stop them. They know that this room is so important, the people in this room. They know that we can defeat them. They know that we will defeat them. But they’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you and I’m just standing in their way. That’s all I’m doing. I’m standing in their way. And that’s why I’m here today. That’s why I’m standing before you, because we are going to finish what we started. We started something that was America. We’re going to complete the mission. We’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers. They are people that don’t get it, although, in some cases, they get it. They get it for their wallets, but we can’t do that. We can’t let that happen. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists. We will throw off the political class that hates our country. They actually hate our country. No walls, no borders, bad elections, no voter ID. We will beat the Democrats. We will route the fake news media. We will expose and appropriately deal with the rhinos. We will evict Joe Biden from the White House. And we will liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all. When we started this journey, a journey like there has never been before, there’s never been anything like this. We had a Republican Party that was ruled by freaks, neocons, globalists, open border zealots, and fools. But we are never going back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.
(09:14)
We’re not going back to people that want to destroy our great social security system, even some in our own party, I wonder who that might be, that want to raise the minimum age of social security to 70, 75, or even 80 in some cases. And that are out to cut Medicare to a level that it will no longer be recognizable. And when that was their original thought, that’s what they always come back to. Remember that. You have to remember that. You heard it here first. We are never going back to a party that wants to give unlimited money to fight foreign wars that are endless wars, that are stupid wars. But at the same time, demands that we cut veterans benefits and retirement benefits at home.
(10:21)
Our soldiers will no longer live in the streets of our city. We have cities where our soldiers, our great soldiers, are living on concrete, they’re living on asphalt. We will take care of our soldiers. There has never been a time like this. Illegal immigrants come in and we house them in the Waldorf Astoria and many other of the greatest hotels anywhere in the world. But our soldiers, we do nothing for them. They sleep out at night and they freeze. They freeze in the cold and they die in the heat, while people that came into our country illegally are in beautiful hotel suites, perhaps watching us on television right now. We were taking care of our soldiers just a short while ago, but we don’t do that anymore. But we’ll start doing it again. Our soldiers are very special to us. When a wonderful town in Ohio has difficulty, we are going to take care of that town, that city, that village prior to worrying about the rest of the world.
(11:39)
We’re taking care of the problems of the rest of the world that they’re not taking care of themselves. They have us put up the money. You know what I’m talking about. If you look at Ukraine, and we all feel so badly about it, but why isn’t NATO putting up dollar for dollar with us? We put up $140 billion and they put up just a tiny fraction of that. And we all want to see success, but it’s far more important to them than it is to us because of that location. We are never going to be a country ruled by entrenched political dynasties in both parties. Rotten special interests, China-loving politicians, of which there are many. You listening to this, Mitch McConnell? You listening? And a militant left wing news media that’s either frightened of telling the truth or is truly evil and bad. I don’t know. I think in many ways they’re frightened, but you never really know which. We are not going back to this mindset, not now, not ever, not ever.
(13:06)
And thank you, Mark Levin, for being here tonight. Thank you very much. And Julie. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Very important voice. Stay healthy, Mark. We can’t lose you. Just stay healthy. Stay healthy, Mark. We’re not going to lose you. In 2016, we took away the power of this corrupt political class. And we did more in four years than any administration in the history of our country, if you look at what we did. We shut down the illegal foreign invasion on our borders and achieved the most secure border in US history. We deported illegal criminal aliens by the tens of thousands. MS-13, taking them out by the thousands. We set records every single week, we were cleaning up our country. I smashed the false idols of the free trade fanatics. These are fools or they’re getting very rich, probably the second. And left the China lobby reeling from our historic tariffs and taxes that we charge them, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our treasury from China.
(14:22)
Thank you very much, China. When no other president had gotten even 25 cents, not one president got anything from them. Our trade deficits were five, six, $700 billion a year. A billion, think of it, dollars a year. Not sustainable by any country. They built their military and they have a very powerful military with the money that we gave them. How stupid are we? I was the only president in modern history who did not have any new wars, no new wars. I finished some old ones. I finished some old ones. Remember when the Democrats and my Republican opponents would often look at me during the debates or whatever and they’d say, “No, no. He’s going to bring us into World War III because it’s a personality type.” They said I had the personality. No, I had the personality type that kept us out of wars because people knew that they weren’t going to mess around with us.
(15:40)
That’s why I rebuilt our military. We were strong, we were safe. And I told delinquent foreign nations, they were delinquent, they weren’t paying their bills, that if they wanted our protection, they had to pay up and they had to pay up now. And they did. They paid $ 450 billion as soon as I said, “No, I won’t be protecting you if you don’t pay.” We truly had a policy of peace through strength. This was a serious, powerful policy. And we didn’t have to lose our loved ones fighting wars in countries that nobody’s ever heard of. I stood firm against the forces of anarchy and decay. I arrested the Marxists to topple statues of our great heroes in Washington, DC. We arrested them. They were knocking down the most beautiful artwork, the most beautiful statues of great heroes. They didn’t even know who they were doing. They just wanted anarchy. And I passed and signed an executive order. Anybody that that gets 10 years in jail with no negotiation. It’s not 10, but it turns into three months.
(16:59)
And it’s an incredible thing that stopped right away. They were heading to the Jefferson Memorial. They wanted to take out Thomas Jefferson. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re going to let that happen. But we passed it. It was a very old law that we founded. One of my very good legal people, along with Steven Miller, they found it. They said, “sir, I don’t know if you want to try and bring this back.” I said, “I do.” And as soon as we passed it, that was the end that just stopped. It’s amazing. It’s a miracle. We banned transgender insanity from our military and signed the world’s first ban on critical race theory long before anybody had even heard of the term. It was all banned, everything was good.
(17:51)
When Biden came back in, this guy came in and he put everything right back in place where it was. We were paying these people hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary among our highest paid people to teach all of this nonsense to our military yet. But it was all out, it was all done. There’s only one president in history who has ever taken on the entire corrupt establishment in Washington. And when we win in 2024, we will do it again even stronger, faster, and better, because… now I am experienced and I know the people of Washington. I didn’t know them. I was from New York. I only came here 17 times, they said. I read that in the fake news, so probably it’s not true, but it’s the best I could do. And I never stayed over. I was from New York. But I now know the good ones, the bad ones, the weak ones, the strong ones. I know them all. I know the people that have to do the job and can do the job. A lot of them are in this room right now.
(19:13)
And as I did for four incredible years, I will put America first every single time, every single day. From the beginning, we have been attacked by a sick and sinister opposition, the radical left communists, the bureaucrats, the fake news media, the big money special interests, the corrupt Democrat prosecutors. Oh, they’re after me for so many things. Oh, those prosecutors. Some are racists. Some hate our country. They all hate me. They’ll get me for anything, anything. You put a comma in this paragraph. Why did you do that? I don’t really know. The partisan and often corrupt intelligence agencies, the George Soros money machine that spends a lot of money on the prosecutors, by the way. The Antifa thugs who are allowed to roam the streets while we have people that in many cases are great patriots, great, great patriots, sing prayers every night, playing our national anthem every day. And they’re sitting in a jail nearby, rotting away, and being treated so unfairly like nobody’s probably ever been treated in this country before, except maybe me.
(20:48)
And Marjorie, you’ve been so fantastic on that issue. Where’s Marjorie? You’ve been so fantastic on that issue. And Elise and Matt, people that love our country, people that love our country have been so great on that issue. And the perverts who use the names of Washington and Lincoln to buy millions of dollars in ads to say bad, lifeless, and incorrect things about us. I didn’t know this was a rally, Matt. It really is a rally. And by the way, thank you for that beautiful straw poll. That was a big win, thank you. Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs. They cannot stand that they do not own me. I don’t need them. I don’t need anything about them. I don’t need their money. They cannot steer me, they cannot shake me, and they will never, ever control me. And they will never, ever, therefore, control you.
(22:13)
At the end of the day, anyone else will be intimidated, bought off, blackmailed, or ripped to shreds. I alone will never retreat. And that is why we must stand together and charge. We have to charge full speed ahead. I had a beautiful life before I did this. I lived in luxury. I had everything. People said to me, “Are you sure you want to do it, sir?” I said, “Oh, this will be so amazing.” What the hell did you get me into? I didn’t know the word subpoena. I didn’t know the word grand jury, those words, grand jury. I didn’t know that they want to lynch you for doing nothing wrong. I didn’t know they want to lynch you for doing a great job. I didn’t know they want to put you away because your poll numbers are better than anybody they’ve seen in years.
(23:20)
And then they go with the disinformation campaign. First of all, we’re leading every Republican by massive numbers. And very importantly, perhaps more importantly, we’re leading Biden by a lot, and we’re leading Kamala by a lot. And every time the polls go up higher and higher, the prosecutors get crazier and crazier. We got to stop these guys. Says, “We have to stop Trump now. We got to stop him now because we can’t stop him at the ballot box.” They tried that in 2016. How did that work out? Not too good. And we actually, and I have to say this, I hope Fox doesn’t turn up, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016, much better.
(24:06)
But We have no choice. If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever. People are tired of rhinos and globalists. They want to see America first. That’s what they want. It’s not too complicated. This is the final battle. They know it, I know it, you know it, everybody knows it. This is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country. And I promise you this, if you put me back in the White House, that beautiful building, but I live in very beautiful buildings, it’s not that reason. The beautiful. That building wasn’t the easiest building to live in with what I was put through. And I get a lot of credit. A lot of people say, “How do you do it, sir?” I had a man come up to me the other day, one of the toughest, strongest people that you can imagine. You all know his name, big businessman, a lot of money, a lot of success, tough as hell.
(25:06)
And he said, “Could I ask you a question, president?” A friend of mine, used to call me Donald, now he calls me president. “Could I ask you a question, president?” “What?” “How do you do it? How do you do it every day? They sent you subpoenas every day. There’re after you. They’re looking to take you down at levels that nobody’s ever put up with before.” Seven years I’ve gone through this. We beat them all, but it continues. And he said to me, “Seriously, how do you do it? I could never do it.” This is one of the toughest guys. I said, “Maybe you could.” He said, “Nope, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. But I do it for you, and that’s what I’m doing it for. I do it for you.” Thank you, [inaudible 00:26:09]. Thank you very much. And if you put me back in the White House, their reign is over. Their reign will be over, and they know it. And America will be a free nation once again. We’re not a free nation right now. We don’t have free press. We don’t have free anything. In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today, I add I am your warrior, I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution. I am your retribution. Not going to let this happen. Not going to let it happen. I will totally obliterate the deep state. I will fire…
Speaker 1 (27:00):
USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.
Donald Trump (27:00):
I will fire the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system like it has never been weaponized before, these are sick people, and I will put the people back in charge of this country again, the people will be back in charge of our country. The Biden administration is the most corrupt administration in American history. Hunter Biden is a criminal, and nothing happened to him, nothing happened. Joe Biden is a criminal and nothing ever seems to happen to him, because you know, say what you want, but the Democrats stick together. They don’t have Mitt Romney, they don’t have guys like that, they stick together. How’s Mitt Romney doing? Not too good. I could name plenty of others too, but they do stick together whether you like them or not, and many of us don’t, but maybe someday we get together..
(28:15)
A question was asked of me just before Covid came in. They said, “The country is coming together, do you think this is real?” And I said to myself, “It is real, it’s amazing.” I was getting calls from radical left people, the nicest calls, it’s amazing, because we had the best employment numbers in history, we had the best economy in history. We were lapping China, China was supposed to have taken over as the world’s largest economy, and we were actually increasing at a level that nobody thought possible, we were doing great. And then you had Covid come in and a lot of things had to happen, and we did a great job. We never got the credit for that job, but we did a great job with Covid and then gave back something very strong, but we were really bringing this country together. Had Covid not come in, I think you would’ve had a much different… Because a lot of people want to know, can we all get along together? And if I didn’t have that experience, I would say no, because the thought process is so different, but we were starting to really get along, and then we had the disaster, as I call it, the China virus, because I want to be open and I want to be accurate.
(29:33)
But Biden openly held back a billion dollar taxpayer, old taxpayer money, for the government of Ukraine. Remember he said, “Until they fire the prosecutor, when they fire that prosecutor.” And this prosecutor was after Hunter and the company that was paying him a fortune of money. Remember Joe Biden stood up and said, “And I looked at them and I said, you’re not getting that billion dollars until you get rid of that.” I can’t believe he did that. Can you imagine if I did that. I wouldn’t be here right now, I suspect. And nobody picks it up, nobody wants to pick it up, it doesn’t get any worse, doesn’t get any worse than that. Although maybe it does, it’s called The Laptop from Hell. And yet they go after me over and over again about something that’s not even a crime. They make up Russia, Russia, Russia, which was a plan made up by crooked Hillary Clinton, Adam Shifty Schiff, and the Democrats, the DNC.
(30:40)
They then made up a fake phone call. They took a phone call that was perfect, and they pretended that I said things that weren’t even there. They actually imitated, remember Schiff, he stood up in Congress and he repeated the call like I was a gangster over and over again, quid pro quo. Remember the term, quid pro quo? But there wasn’t. I called downstairs at the White House, I said, “Listen, do we have that call taped? Because there’s no way I said those things.” And they called back and tell me, “Yes, sir, we do.” Essentially, we had transcripts of the call. Thank goodness we had transcripts because these guys they’re sick, they’re sick people, and they were looking to do a number. I’ll tell you how bad they are, and I tell this story seldom, but it’s a strong story. Monica, thank you very much for the great job you did, by the way, what a defender she is.
(31:38)
But they’re so bad, so they come up with this Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and they know it’s a hoax. They know it’s hoax, I know it’s a hoax too, but they know it’s a hoax. And Adam Shifty Schiff comes out from a very secretive room, intelligence committee or whatever, and he meets the press right in front. The press is going crazy, they’re going crazy because they’ll do anything to hurt Trump, anything, they’re evil people in many cases. In some cases they’re great people, but a lot of evil people. And he stands up before a microphone. Now, this is a man who knows it’s a fake story, Russia. Russia, Russia. They checked six years of phone calls, millions of calls were made from my office, not one call to Russia, not one call. They weren’t surprised, but some people were surprised.
(32:28)
But he stood up before the microphones and he said, “Donald Trump Jr. will go to prison for what he has done with Russia.” My son’s going to go to prison. He said my son’s going to go to prison for what he’s done with Russia. And my son didn’t have anything to do with it, and he knew it was a fake story, and when it was finally revealed, now the Times, the Washington Post, they all admit it was fake story. We’re trying to get the Pulitzer Prize taken away, they got Pulitzer Prize. We’re suing. You know what the prize says? “For its concise and accurate reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia event.” And they have it actually totally wrong. Actually, Mark Levin should get a prize, and Greg Jared, Greg Jared should get a prize. And even it’s not his deal, Sean Hannity should get a prize. And frankly, Jesse should get a prize, Jesse should. And a lot of people, and I’ll tell you, you know who should get a prize? Tucker should get a prize, they’re very strong,
(33:45)
And we have numerous writers that should get it, but the ones that got it were the New York Times, certain reporters from the New York Times, and certain reporters from the Washington Post, they got the Pulitzer Price, and they were exactly wrong. And now they’ve even admitted that it was a hoax, it was a total hoax, and they got the prize. But how bad is a person that stands before a big gaggle of press and they just can’t get enough, and says that my son is going to prison for something that he knows was a hoax? Only a really bad person would do that. But they then came in with Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the Mueller hoax. How did Mueller present himself at the hearings? It wasn’t too pretty. But you know what? I’ll say this, at least they came to the right conclusion, because I was concerned they’d come to the conclusion, I think we have prosecutors now, they don’t give a if you’re guilty. They’re looking at me in Atlanta on a perfect phone call, I said, “Even more perfect than my perfect call to Ukraine.” That was a perfect call, this is even more perfect.
(35:05)
By the way, where’s Hunter? Where is Hunter? Remember, where’s Hunter? Will there ever be a time when Joe Biden says, “This thing with Hunter just isn’t working out well, I’m starting to get a little angry at Hunter.”? Or when Hunter comes to him and says, “Dad, dad, we have a problem.” “What is it, son? Another one, oh, son, you’re a disaster son. Son, you’re a disaster.” “Dad, we have a problem, I left my laptop at the repair shop.” And Joe looks at him and says, “What’s on it, son, what’s on it?” And Hunter looks back and he says, “Every single crime that you’ve ever committed dad.” And hence is called The Laptop from Hell. And Miranda Devine did a great book on that, and she actually thanked me. She said, “I got the name from Trump.” She told me, she said, “I want to thank you for the name.” I said, “No charge.” But she did a great job, great book, The Laptop from Hell. If I so much is fly over a blue state, they do so many bad things, it’s just crazy.
(36:29)
The racist Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is presiding over one of the most dangerous and violent cities in the United States, you have to see this, the United States where killings are taking place at a number like nobody’s ever seen, right in Manhattan. And he’s doing nothing about it, nothing whatsoever. No cash bail for people that just kill people, knife them in the back, hit them over the head with a baseball bat, push them into subways when this train is right there. But this racist DA is being pushed by radical left Democrats, the fake news media, and the Department of Injustice to bring charges against me for now ancient, no affair story of Stormy Horseface Daniels. No attraction, No affair, I call it no affair, where there’s no crime anyway. And charges have never been brought in such a case before, and this case has been looked by every prosecutor, they’re all looking, they’ve looked at it for years now. She was represented by Michael Avenatti, how’s he doing? He’s now in jail and the whole thing is a complete con job, and she was ordered to pay me in federal court order this, hundreds of thousands of dollars. But they’re still looking at it, they’re still looking, and all they do is they cause anger and problems for our country, because our people aren’t going to take this stuff.
(38:14)
It never ends, in the meantime, Hunter and Joe Biden skate, they skate. They go away free, what’s going on with that? That laptop is a disaster. Has anyone read this thing? How can it be possible? They’re looking in Delaware. How’s he doing? He’s not the same guy that I have for the document oaks. I have a man, he’s a total animal. Known to be, and he’s looking, looking, looking, in the meantime, Biden’s guy that’s looking, looking, looking. And don’t forget, I had a very strong privilege as president. I was able to do things that he wasn’t able to do as vice president and wasn’t able to do as a senator. Even the Senate, they can’t believe it. The Senate cannot believe it, but when you look at what happened, they’re not even looking at him, they haven’t even started. Congress and various radical left Democrat prosecutors, in an effort to stop me, go to the Supreme Court twice. They went twice, and the Supreme Court, in a moment of total weakness, gives them everything they want in order to try and prosecute Trump everything.
(39:21)
Thank you very much, Supreme Court, I appreciate it. But they found nothing. They looked at 11 million pages of documents, it’s a big company, it’s a great company. Remember my taxes? “We’re after his taxes.” Five years I heard about my taxes. They came out about two months ago, everyone said, “Wow, it’s a great company he built, that’s great.” That’s the end of it. No, right? And I had the biggest and most prestigious one of them, at least law firms, accounting firms, doing all this stuff. I don’t do it, they do it, you rely on these people, they do it. But I didn’t hear one word, and how stupid am I telling you this story right now? Because now they’ll go, “We got to find something in there.” He made a typographical error. There’s a revolution going on within the FBI because they don’t want to be doing what they’re being told to do because they know right from wrong, I’m talking about the people that work in the FBI, and they like me and they like you a lot, so many of them. A recent article in the Washington Post, of all papers, stated very succinctly that many did not want to raid Mar-a-Lago, they didn’t want the agents. They said, “That’s terrible.” But they were forced to do so by their Marxist radical left leadership, and it drove my popularity numbers through the roof. Who would think this?
(40:46)
I got impeached and I went up 11 points. It’s not supposed to work like that. Mark, when Nixon got impeached, it went down right away, it was as spiral down, he couldn’t stop it. I got impeached, we went up, but the FBI people, they didn’t want to do this. To those in the FBI that are with us, I want to thank you very much, I really do, I want to thank you. Stay strong, stay strong, help is coming. Then there’s the racist DA from Atlanta, whose city is among the most violent and dangerous places per capita in the country. More murders than even Chicago per capita. It’s totally out of control and yet she has her kangaroo court focused on a perfect phone call that I made, while her jury foreman, a rather bizarre young woman, is going around doing media interviews and saying exactly what’s going on in this one of many grand juries. Our opponents do anything they can to hurt me politically because they’re afraid of me and they’re afraid of you, that’s what it is, but it’s not supposed to work that way.
(41:59)
The disinformation, people say they are great at disinformation. The one we want to run against is Trump. Do you ever hear that? “Oh, we want to run against Trump.” Even though I’m leading every one of these guys, and even though I won the second election, I won it by a lot. When they say Biden won, the smart people know they didn’t. But right now, we’re way up. But they say, “Oh, we want to run against Trump.” They always say that, they say that about everybody. When they have somebody that they don’t want to run against, a governor, or senator, they say, “We want to run against.” Because it’s like demeaning, in other words, like you’re supposed to be schlemiel. I got 75 million votes, I got more votes than any city president in history the second time. And we really did, we did a much better job than we did in 2016. 2020, we did better than 2016, but they say, “We want to run against Trump.” In the meantime, they’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find just a single word, a sentence, anything to prosecute Trump because they don’t want to run against me. That’s what they say, “We want to run against Trump, we’ll do anything to run against Trump.”
(43:13)
They have the greatest line of bullshit of any group of people I’ve ever seen. Want to run against Trump. But at the same time, they send people from the Justice Department to the local DA’s office of Manhattan. Do you know the Justice Department sent their top people to the Manhattan DA’s office to help in the prosecution of Trump? This way, we have it a little bit away from Washington. It’s local. Oh, we had nothing to do, but their top guy was put in that office to help prosecute Trump. How would you like to have my life? Would anybody like my life? But I still like it. But they want to try and find anything they can when they’ve already been exonerated, I’ve been exonerated many times. You take a look at what this meant, time after time, but all of this is happening for one single reason. They know that when we return to power, we will bring their lies, and their corruption, and their disinformation tumbling down. Our getting back in the White House is their worst nightmare, but it is our country’s only hope, it’s our only hope. If we don’t get back now, this country can’t take it, even the two years, and now, fortunately it’s less than that, it’s hard to believe it’s less. We used to say four years, a lot of people said, “Well, sir, the election was so bad, you’ll be in in one year.” A lot of people in this room, “You’ll be back in six weeks, sir.” But it’s a bad system in many ways, very bad, very dangerous system, but nobody else can do it but us. In recent weeks, I’ve been laying out a bold detailed agenda for how we’re going to complete this mission in our next term. I do weekly statements and people are liking them. Today, I want to go through some of our big plans that I will do as the 47th President of the United States. Thank you.
(45:45)
At the top of my list, we’ll be stopping the slide into costly and never-ending wars, we got to stop it. Can’t keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars protecting people that don’t even like us. Now in business, if you did that, what you do is you put up the money and then you say, “But listen, we own half your country in case you win.” You take a piece of the upside, right? I don’t get nothing. In fact, the opposite, we put up the money, and then after it’s finished, assuming it’s successful, let’s say it’s successful, they don’t want to even talk to us. “Nope, you have nothing to do with us, get out of here.” You have nothing. No, no, in business, you put up money, seed money, call it whatever you want, you end up owning the country by the time it’s over, and the only reason they’re doing well is we’re giving them the greatest equipment, that I bought, the greatest equipment ever made. And the only reason they’re doing well with NATO is I raised $440 billion from countries that weren’t paying anything.
(46:47)
And the Secretary General, Stoltenberg, a good man, he said, “It’s one of the greatest jobs I’ve ever seen.” I hope he still says that, but one of the greatest jobs. He said, “Obama would come and make a speech, Bush would come make a speech, and then they’d leave.” I came, I looked, I said, “Man, these people aren’t paying, we’re paying for the whole thing practically.” Of the 28 countries at the time, only eight were paid up, 20 weren’t, including Germany, they paid a fraction of what they were supposed to be paying. And I said to him, “Either you pay or we’re not going to protect you.” And a man stood up, a president of a country stood up, and he said, “Sir, could I ask you a question?” This was a round table with nobody in the room, but the presidents, prime ministers, and dictators, okay? Some of them are all the same, but they stood up and he stood up and said, “Sir, can I ask you a question? If we don’t pay up and if we get attacked by Russia, will you protect us, sir?” I said, “Now you’re not paid up, right?” “That’s right.” “You’re delinquent, right?” “Yes.” I will not protect you from Russia.” “Sir, we’ll send you a check tomorrow, sir. We’ll send you a check tomorrow. It’ll be sent by overnight mail, sir, I promise you’ll have it tomorrow.”
(48:10)
Now, if I said like the stupid politicians say, “Absolutely. Article 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, where you’re supposed to do it? But those articles all suppose that you’re supposed to be paid up. But let’s say I said the opposite, “Yes, we will always protect you.” And I took a lot of heat because they said, “I’m not a good member.” Actually, NATO wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t get them to pay up, but they paid up $449 billion or something, and that’s the money they use. They’re rich as hell right now, they spent on an office building that cost $3 billion. It’s like a skyscraper in Manhattan later in its side, it’s one of the longest buildings I’ve ever seen, and I said, “You should have, instead of spending $3 billion, you should have spent $500 million building the greatest bunker you’ve ever seen.” Because Russia wouldn’t even need an airplane attack. One tank, one shot through that beautiful glass building and it’s gone. Same architect I used in Chicago, great architects, but they didn’t have war in mind, but when things happen, that building would be gone at about 15 minutes.
(49:20)
They should have spent a $500 million bunker, nice thick ceiling, six inches, six feet of concrete. And by the way, we have a great gentleman, speaking of China, will you please stand up? Gordon, stand up, please. Gordon. I’m talking a lot about China, and I’m looking over, I’m studying him, and I’m studying his face as I’m speaking, because people do like me to go off script a little bit, right? It’s a little bit more risky, but it’s more exciting. And I’m looking at Gordon, and I’m saying, “I hope he agrees with what I’m saying.” But basically I’m saying exactly what you say. They’re not out for our good, are they? They’re not out for our good, and nobody ever taxed them like I did, and nobody ever took any money in like I did. $440 billion, we took in so much money from China, it’s so incredible. So I just, it’s an honor to have you here, really it is. I agree with almost everything you said, almost everything. Great. Thank you very much, thank you, madam, thank you very much, great job, both of you.
(50:33)
I was the only president in decades that didn’t have a war, but I completed wars that were already started, including defeating 100% of the ISIS Caliphate. I was also the only president where Russia didn’t take over a country during my term. Russia took over, not because I got along with Vladimir Putin very well. I said, “Vladimir, don’t do it. You know, you and I have friends, don’t take over any countries because Moscow will be hit very hard.” Well, I told him things. He probably didn’t believe it, but you know what, he believed it 10%, and President Xi believed it when I talked about Beijing. He probably said, “I don’t believe him, but there’s a 10% chance we’re not going to do anything.” It’s true, it’s true, you have no idea these conversations. I wish they could have been recorded, actually, people would think a lot of me. But with Bush, they invaded Georgia, right? With Obama, they took Crimea, with Biden, they’re trying to take everything. And he won’t even know they took it. Thank you. And with me, they took nothing, nothing. And I didn’t really even have to threaten them very much, they understood me very well, I wanted them to understand me very well. They knew that they couldn’t do it. Putin knew that, President Xi knew it too. Likewise, China now has its eyes strongly focused on Taiwan, and we could soon have a nuclear armed Iran. That’s the saddest thing of all though, when we talk about Iran, that’s the saddest thing when you see. I had them in a box. I said to China, “You can’t buy any oil from Iran.” They said, “No, no, we have to buy. We buy millions of barrels here.” And I said, “You can’t buy, you have to buy from somebody else.” “No, no, we’ll buy.” I said, good, we’re not going to do any more trading with China, we’re going cold Turkey.” “We will promise you not to buy from Iran.”
(52:57)
That was the end of that, that was a conversation I had. I said, “If you buy from Iran, any oil, we’re not going to do any business, or if for some reason we do, we’re going to put a hundred percent tariff on every single thing that you sell into the United States.” And they didn’t buy any oil, and nobody was buying oil, and they were in a position, had the election not turned out the way it did, they were in a position where they were going to give us everything. We were going to make a great deal. But now they’re rich Again, China’s buying unlimited amounts of oil from Iran, unlimited amounts in other places, and we’ve done something else that’s terrible. From the time I’m a young man, I learned, never allow Russia and China to get together to, wed never ever allow it. And we’ve not only allowed it, we’ve made them bosom buddies, we’ve forced them together. And you can add
Donald Trump (54:00):
Had another group in there, a nuclear armed Iran. So the three of them are now together. That should have never been allowed to happen, would’ve never happened with me. And it was all over oil, our stupid oil policy. We’re not going to drill. We have more oil in the United States than any country in the world, including Saudi Arabia, people don’t realize it. In Alaska, I approved a site, we all know what the site is, probably the biggest in the world. And the Democrats said, “No, it’s over.” They turned it down. Ronald Reagan tried to do it. Every president, Republican and some Democrats tried to do it, they couldn’t get it done, I got it done. And the first day in office, the Secretary of the Interior for Biden signed off on it where they’re going to not allow it to happen bigger probably than Saudi Arabia. If we had that without even my talking to Putin, oil would’ve been at $40, $35, maybe $30 a barrel.
(55:09)
So he wouldn’t have even had the money to prosecute a war against Ukraine. He wouldn’t have done it anyway, but… And that’s not even what I’m saying from previous. But he wouldn’t have had the money, even if he wanted to. Ukraine would’ve been thriving. There would’ve been no dead people, and there would’ve been no obliterated cities that can never be rebuilt, can never rebuild those cities. Russia never would’ve pulled the trigger. This is the most dangerous time in the history of our country, and Joe Biden is leading us into oblivion. He’s leading us into oblivion. We all smile when he falls downstairs and things, it’s cute. When he falls off his bicycle, isn’t this cute? You know what amazed me that the reporters didn’t catch him when the bike was going down. They’re standing right next to him. They let him fall. It’s amazing. I’m surprised.
(56:09)
But when he makes statements that are so bad when he gets out of Afghanistan and takes the soldiers, takes [inaudible 00:56:16] takes the soldiers out first. And in Afghanistan for 18 months, I had a talk with Abdul who was the leader of Afghanistan. I said, “Abdul…” Oh, I got a lot of criticism. Remember when I was talking to him, everyone said, “Oh, he is talking to the leader of the Taliban.” That’s right. Because our soldiers were being killed, a lot of them by snipers, and I didn’t want that. I don’t want to deal with the problems, and I don’t want to talk to the mothers and fathers who I would speak to a lot. I don’t want to talk to them and tell them their son was shot through the head from 2000 yards away by a sharp shooter. They have very good sharp shooters. So I spoke to this man, his name was Abdul, and I said, “Abdul, don’t kill any more of our soldiers because if you kill our soldiers, we are going to hit you harder than any country has ever been hit in the history of the world.”
(57:33)
And he called me Your Excellency. See, he and I got along. He’s still there. He’s still the leader of the Taliban, but now he’s got $85 billion worth of our equipment that I bought, $85 billion. I said to General Millie, I want every piece of equipment, “Sir, I think it would be cheaper to leave it behind, sir.” That’s when I lost faith, that, and when he didn’t like me holding up a Bible in front of a church, I said, “This guy’s not with us. This is not a smart guy.” But he didn’t like it. I said, “I want every single…” Because I was getting out of… But I would’ve kept Bagram, because Bagram is one hour away from where China, forget about Afghanistan, where China makes its nuclear weapons, one hour away. The biggest, most powerful runways in the world, we built it many years ago for tens of billions of dollars, and we gave it away one night.
(58:24)
We just left the lights on. We did leave the dogs behind. Everyone says, “Oh, did they take the dogs? Because they’re dog lovers.” No, we left the dogs behind. And the Taliban doesn’t like dogs, by the way, not at all. But we left in disgrace. It was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, in my opinion. And it probably is what caused Putin to say, “Wow, Trump is gone. This is a great time to take over Ukraine.” Right? It’s probably a reason that that happened. But I stand here today and I’m the only candidate who can make this promise. I will prevent and very easily World War III, very easily. And you’re going to have World War III, by the way. You’re going to have World War III if something doesn’t happen fast, you’re going to have World War three. And by the way, just to conclude that little story, when Abdul heard me say that, he said, “Your Excellency, thank you so much for telling me that.”
(59:38)
He said, “But why, but why?” I thought it was a very interesting plan, words I’ve never heard. I use it now sometimes myself. I liked it. He said, “But why, but why, Mr. President, do you send me pictures of my home?” He said that. I said, “You’ll have to ask your wives that question.” And we didn’t have, Mark will tell you this, we didn’t have one soldier killed in 18 months, not one soldier was killed, not one soldier, right? In fact, it was so good that the media didn’t mind that I called. I took a lot of heat, tremendous heat. “Why do you call him?” I said, “Well, they asked Jesse James, the great bank robber from many years ago, “Why is it that you robbed banks? Why do you always go after banks?” And he looked at him, he says, “Because that’s where the money is.” Well, I spoke to Abdul because that’s where the problem was.” But we won 18 months until that horrible day when we lost 13 soldiers.
(01:01:02)
And the thing that nobody ever talks about, we lost 13. We lost 85 billion worth of the greatest military equipment in the world, goggles, night goggles that are so good, so sophisticated, better than anything, we have brand new, never even taken out of the box. And the Afghans, and they’re actually very good. The Taliban are good fighters. Afghan, because it’s really very much the same thing, frankly. They didn’t fight good for us, but they fought good for themselves and they took a lot of money from us. I asked General Mattis, I said, “We got to get out of there. They’ve been there for 20 years. We got to get out of there.” “Sir, they’re fighting for their country, sir.” I said, “Hmm, that’s right. I guess they are.” Then about two days later, I was thinking about it. I said, “I don’t know why,” because we had more blue on green, green on blue where they’d get their gun and then they’d shoot our master sergeants and our sergeants that are training them.
(01:01:59)
I said, “Why are they fighting for us if we’ve never had this problem to the extent that we had it?” But he said that. He said, “They’re fighting.” And I said, “Are we paying them a lot of money to fight?” And I had it checked. Yeah, we were paying billions and billions and billions of dollars to these Afghan soldiers, tens of billions of dollars. I said, “They’re not fighting, General…” I called him back, “They’re not fighting because they love us or they love their country. They’re fighting because they’re the highest paid soldiers in the world. We’re basically bribing them to fight.” And they didn’t fight, but the Taliban did fight. Same people, but the Taliban did fight. But they didn’t kill anybody for 18 months. I’m very proud. In fact, Biden got up and he actually said that, “They didn’t kill anybody. I will say that they didn’t kill anybody for 18 months.” And you know what happened? Because people start screaming, “Don’t say that,” because that’s a good thing for us.
(01:02:57)
But then when we left, we lost soldiers, 13 killed. But what they don’t talk about, they talk about the equipment. They talk about the fact that there are still to this day, a lot of Americans in there that we’ve lost contact with, it’s a rough place. But they don’t talk about the fact that many of these soldiers were absolutely destroyed. Destroyed. They lost their arms, they lost their legs. They had their face blown off, and they were absolutely destroyed. And they don’t talk about that. They don’t talk about it. That it’s very sad because these people, many of them, we lost 13, they died, but nobody ever talks about the gravity of the injuries to these soldiers. And it’s a very sad thing. I got it down to 2,500 people. I was the one that got it down. But we were going to get out with dignity, with strength. We were going to be respected and admired. And I could just see Abdul, they took out the soldiers first.
(01:04:03)
You don’t take the soldiers first. You take the soldiers out last. You get the Americans out first. Because they feared our soldiers, they feared our soldiers. They feared the F-16s, and now they own them. Think of it, you get the soldiers and they go out last. You take our American citizens out, you then take our equipment out. And Millie said to me, “Sir, it’s cheaper to leave the equipment than it is to take it out.” I said, “Let me ask you, General. So we have a plane that cost a hundred million dollars, brand new. You want to let…” “Yes, sir. It’s cheaper, sir.”
(01:04:39)
I thought he was another April fools deal, right? I said, “No, General, you fill it up with a tank of jet fuel. You fly it back home, or at a minimum you fly it into Pakistan or some semi friendly country and you take it from there.” “No, sir.” I actually told them I want the tents. You know the tents, they have big canvas, incredible tents with the… “I want every piece of steel. I want every screw. I want every nut. I want every bolt. I want every tractor. I want every Jeep.”
(01:05:12)
You know what they did? They left 700,000 rifles and guns, 700,000. They left 70,000 vehicles, 70,000, many of them brand new, many of them armor-plated where they have six inches of steel on the bottom. Of course, your millions of dollars to build. And they left that all behind. There’s not a car company, used car lot, new car lot anywhere in the world that would have 70,000 vehicles. I said to a friend of mine who’s one of the Arrigo in Florida, great guy. I said, “How many cars?” He said, “I think he’s like the biggest in Florida.” They sold, they did very well, thank you. But the biggest. I said, “How many cars would you have?” “I don’t know. A couple of hundred extra. Couple of hundred.” And he’s like, “A big one. Real big one. Run runs a great operation.” 70,000 vehicles. So now I read the other day that the Taliban, that Afghanistan is the second-largest seller of arms anywhere in the world because they’re selling everything that we gave them.
(01:06:25)
And by the way, as I’m speaking, I see cash? Is that cash? Oh, my eyes are better than I think. And is that Rick Grinnell? Huh? Wow. I better check with Gordon and I better check this audience a little more closely. I’m going to miss a lot of people in here. Great, two real patriots. They really are two great people, thank you very much. But they’re the second largest to us. They’re the second largest arms dealer in the world. They’re selling off all the beautiful brand new equipment we gave them. The Apache helicopter, which is the best in the world. They gave one to Russia, gave it. They gave one to China, and they’re very good. They take it apart and they reduplicate it. They take it apart, they reduplicate it because they’ve never been able to build one like we have. Now they’re able to do it because they’re very smart, actually. Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly quickly.
(01:07:36)
I will get the problem solved, and I will get it solved in rapid order, and it will take me no longer than one day. I know exactly what to say to each of them. I got along very well with them. I got along very well with Putin, even though I’m the one that ended this pipeline. Remember they said, “Trump is giving a lot to Russia.” Really? Putin actually said to me, “If you’re my friend, I’d hate like hell to see you as my enemy,” because I ended the pipeline, do you remember? Nord Stream II, nobody ever heard of it, right? Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream II until I came along. I started talking about Nord Stream II. I had to go call it the pipeline because nobody knew what I was talking about, but I ended it. It was dead. I told every company that had sucked into it that you’re not doing business with the United States of America if you go forward and allow this to be built, it was done.
(01:08:29)
On day one, Biden came in… And this is the biggest economic development project. This is the most important project that Russia has on day one. This is the biggest money they could ever make. There’s nothing they could ever do to compete with us. This is the biggest pipeline in the world. Going to supply Europe, Germany in particular. On day one, Biden came in and what did he do? He approved the Nord Stream pipeline. And then they’d say, “Trump was soft on Russia.” I was the one that gave a thousand Javelins, that’s the anti-tech busters. And they are vicious because I looked at those tanks and they ended up, they got hit one shot, and that was the end of that, you wouldn’t want to be in those tanks. But I was the one that supplied the Javelins. They supplied the bedsheets, do you remember? They supplied the bedsheets and maybe even some pillows from Mike who’s sitting right over here. Where the hell is Mike? Did you send some pillows over there? Maybe? But they supplied the bedsheets, they call it. We supplied the sheets. They didn’t want to get involved.
(01:09:36)
I gave the Javelins, and then they say, “Trump was weak on Russia.” Disinformation. Again, it’s disinformation, right? That’s all they’re good at, cheating on elections and disinformation. Instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars to defend the borders of distant foreign countries. Under my leadership, we will defend our borders first. Three years ago, we had the safest border in the history of our country, and I will quickly do that again. As you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and completed that task as promised, and then I began to add even more in areas that seemed to be allowing a lot of people to come in. So we’re going to do another 200 miles of wall, and it could have been done and completed in three weeks but the Biden administration said they weren’t going to do it. And in fact, the wall was sitting there waiting to be installed, the easiest part, and Biden, they took it away. So the Texas and Arizona couldn’t use it.
(01:10:48)
Texas and Arizona said, “Could we use that wall? We’ll finish it right up.” And they said, no. And they actually took it away and they hid it. They put it in a hiding area, which of course was revealed pretty quickly, all you have to do is send a couple of helicopters up. But they wouldn’t let them use it. Under my leadership, we will seal it up and expand that wall till we have total control. Well, we did a great job in the wall. Remember with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell? “Yeah, we’ll give it to you next year.” I said, “Nope, nope. Give it to me this year.” “Well, sir, if you approve this budget, we’ll give it to you next year.” I said, “All right, that’s okay.” So I waited, then they didn’t give it, and yet Mitch McConnell approves five and a half trillion dollars for Green New Deal garbage. It’s a disgrace. But I took it from the military because I considered it an invasion.
(01:11:42)
So Marjorie, I said, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to take it right out of the military because they’re invading our country.” And I got it built, and we did a great job. We did it quickly. And we used the Army [inaudible 01:11:53] Engineers, they were fantastic. Before Biden came into office, we had illegal immigration at a record low, refugees were at the lowest level in history. Human trafficking, women and children was at the lowest in 30 years. And drug dealers were finding the US border a very inhospitable place to be. It was very inhospitable. In my last year, less drugs came through the southern border than had been seen in many, many decades. We weren’t playing games. Now we have complete chaos. Fentanyl is pouring in. Families are being wiped out, destroyed, and there’s death everywhere, all caused by incompetence. Millions of illegal aliens are stampeding across our border. Interior enforcement has been shut down. Everyone is overstaying their visas. Nobody even thinks about reporting it anymore. My wonderful travel ban is gone. I had a travel ban, it was so wonderful.
(01:12:54)
Refugee numbers are through the roof. And spies and terrorists are infiltrating our country totally unchecked like never before. When I’m back in the White House, the very first reconciliation bill I will sign will be for a massive increase in Border Patrol and a colossal increase in the number of ice deportation officers. And I want to thank the Border Patrol. These are incredible people. And I want to thank ICE. And in particular, I want to thank Brandon Judd, Border Patrol and Tom Holman, Central Casting. He’s Central Casting. Under my leadership, we will use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. Other countries are emptying out their prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions and sending all of their problems right into their dumping ground, the USA. Think of it, they’re emptying out their prisons, and you’ve heard me say that, but they’re also emptying out their mental institutions and to use a strong couple of words, insane asylum.
(01:14:19)
Insane asylum, that’s where… Anybody see Silence of the Lamb? That’s where they come from. Insane asylum. That’s a stronger word than a mental institution. And they’re putting them into our country, thank you very much. I will ask every state and federal agency to identify every known or suspected gang member in America and every one of them that is here illegally. And the towns know who they are, the towns and cities or the police. We love our police. The police know who they are. And we will pick them up and we will throw them out of our country and there will be no questions asked. We had a problem when I first assumed the office in 2016, it was a big problem. We’d have these people, we’d round them up, MS-13 gangs, the worst people. These are absolute brutal killers. They used to knife 16 year old girls because it was more painful. It would take longer to kill her. These are real animals. And Nancy Pelosi said, “How dare you call them animals? These are human beings.”
(01:15:27)
I said, “No, they’re not.” But these are real animals. And we couldn’t get them back into their countries because the country was like, especially three… You take a look at Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras in particular, and Mexico to an extent, you couldn’t get them back in because they didn’t want them. They sent them out in the first place here. They forced them into our country, just so you know. These are very smart people that run these places. They’re very streetwise. So I said, “What’s the problem?” “Sir, we have thousands of people, but they won’t allow us to land the planes. They won’t allow the buses to cross the border. They won’t allow them back in their country.” I said, “How much money do we pay to these various countries?” “Sir, we pay $750 million a year.” I said, “All right, inform the country that we’re no longer paying any money. And if they ask why, you can tell them.”
(01:16:16)
“Yes sir, we’ll do that.” So the following morning, almost simultaneously early, about eight o’clock, I got calls from all three at one time. In fact, I had to tell two of them, “I’ll call you back,” because they all came in right on time, Matt, right on time, like you call on time. And what happens is they came in and they called. They said, “Sir, there must be a misunderstanding. We would love to have MS-13 back in our country.” And we started dropping them off by the tens of thousands, and I still hadn’t paid them back their money. I kept it. I figured, let’s hold it as long as possible because they’ve been ripping us off long enough. To stop the flow of deadly drugs, it will be my policy to take down the cartels just as I took down the ISIS caliphate that everybody said was impossible to do. A lot of parents in this audience that lost a child, that lost a loved one to Fentanyl and all of the drugs that are pouring in so many different kinds, fentanyl is a big problem.
(01:17:26)
In fact, with the ISIS caliphate, a certain general said, ” It could only be done in three years and probably it can’t be done at all, sir.” And I did it in three weeks. I went over to Iraq, met a great general. “Sir, I can do it in three weeks,” you’ve heard that story. “I could do it in three weeks, sir.” How are you going to do that? They explained it. I did it in three weeks. I was told it couldn’t be done at all, but it would take at least three years. Did it in three weeks, knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate. We have a great military. The reason I say that, we have a great military. And I will direct the Department of Justice to go after Marxist prosecutor’s offices to make them pay for their illegal race-based enforcement of the law. By the way, we have one of those great generals with us, General Kellogg. Where’s General Kellogg? Is he around here [inaudible 01:18:21]? Where is General Kellogg? He’s the greatest. He’s here. Thank you, General. Thank you. Thank you, General. And in cities where there’s been a complete breakdown of public safety, I will send in federal assets, including the National Guard, until law and order is restored. We’re not supposed to do that. And one thing I think about a lot is when we had some difficulty in certain cities like Minneapolis. And if you take a look at Portland, how’s Portland doing? They don’t even have storefronts anymore. Everything’s two by four is because they get burned down every week. They don’t put news storefronts up. It’s chaos. But what we had in Seattle, remember they took over a large portion. I was ready to send in the National Guard. They heard that. More than the National Guard, I was ready to go to town. And they heard that. You know what they did? They said, “We’re going to break it up now.” They left. But we saved Minneapolis.
(01:19:19)
The thing is, we’re not supposed to do that because it’s up to the governor, the Democrat governor. They never want any help. They don’t mind. It’s almost like they don’t mind to have their cities and states destroyed. There’s something wrong with these people. All of us have seen too many videos of 13 year old carjackers and 14 year old hoodlums viciously beating their victims, saw it just yesterday, a horrible situation. They kill people without retribution because they may be day short of the age required to put them away, put them in jail, and throw away the keys for a long time. My administration will crack down on these out of control monsters. Young though, they may be an imposed tough consequences on juvenile criminals. Criminals use young people. They actually hire young people, pay them some money, not a lot, because if they get caught, nothing’s going to happen to them.
(01:20:13)
That will end. I will end the scourge of homelessness taking over our cities and suburbs. I just drove through Washington DC coming here for the first time in quite a while, and the roads and highways were littered with trash like I’ve never seen before. It looked like somebody just took their garbage and just threw it all over the highways, the beltway. It’s so disgraceful, so disgusting. I always made it a point as president, when I saw the highways were dirty or that the homeless encampments were starting to form, to take care of the problem immediately. I used to have people out here all the time, sweeping highways, cleaning highways, hosing them down.
Donald Trump (01:21:00):
It bothered me so much. I’m in the Beast. I’m being driven back to the White House from some site, and I’d see this filthy, dirty highway with paper that hasn’t been … You could see it’s been laying there for months, and I’d have them cleaned up. I wouldn’t even call the mayor because it was never going to get done with the mayor. Frankly, the federal government should take over control and management of Washington, DC, good project because it’s horrible.
(01:21:35)
I think of it differently. Foreign leaders come in to see us. We want them to do what we want them to do, and they drive through these terrible, disgusting streets, where their streets are much better, much better maintained, much nicer. They see camps and homeless all over our once beautiful parks, all over, hundreds and hundreds of tents. I used to have them taken down … I’d see one or two or three. I said, “Do it fast, immediately.” Then I’d check, and it was done.
(01:22:07)
They’d never have time to do it. Once they have 500, 600, 700 of these things up, it’s a much more difficult thing, but you can do that, too. Under our leadership, we will take the homeless, drug addicted, and severely deranged, get them off our streets and create tent cities where we will get them the help they so desperately need. On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden’s crazy executive order installing Marxist diversity, equity, and inclusion czars in every federal agency, and I will immediately terminate all staffers hired to implement this horrible agenda.
(01:22:55)
I will urge Congress to create a restitution fund for Americans who have been unjustly discriminated against by these Biden policies. They’re so unfair. They’re so un-American. They’re so un-American. We will ban all racial discrimination by the government. I will fight for parents’ rights. Can you believe that here we are and I’m saying I’m going to fight for parents’ rights? Who would think that you have to ever say, “Parents’ rights?” Don’t you think parents have pretty good rights, right? Who would think that you have to actually say it? But you do because they took the rights away, including universal school choice and the direct election of school principals by the parents.
(01:23:37)
We want the school principal to be appointed and elected by parents. You’ll get some good principals then. Who loves the children more than the parents? If any principal is not getting the job done, the parents should be able to fire that principal immediately and select someone new. Continuing the work of our 1776 Commission, we will teach our values and promote our history and our traditions to our children. We will, in other words, be proud of our country again.
Audience (01:24:18):
USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.
Donald Trump (01:24:35):
I will revoke every Biden policy promoting the chemical castration and sexual mutilation of our youth and ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states. That should be easy. We will keep men out of women’s sports. How ridiculous. That will take place on day one. I will destroy the illegal censorship regime and bring back free speech in America because we do not have free speech.
(01:25:23)
I will stop Joe Biden’s demolition of our economy with his crushing inflation and mass layoffs. We will take care of inflation very, very quickly. 4.9 million people have dropped out of the labor force since I was president. As the Trump administration’s great Larry Kudlow … Does everybody know Larry? As Larry Kudlow said, “Biden is setting a record on economic regulations that are absolutely killing American companies. His spending and his borrowing are at record levels. It’s causing historic inflation, sir, which is only going to get worse and worse, sir.”
(01:26:07)
He just called me before I got here. I said, “I don’t want to say this, Larry. It’s only going to get worse and worse. It’s driving up interest rates, and new cars and homes are going to be impossible to buy.” Amidst this economic disaster, Biden talks about saving you a few dollars on some junk fees, don’t mean anything. By defeating Joe Biden, I will save your economy. I will save your retirement accounts, and I will save your jobs. We had the greatest job history of any president ever.
(01:26:37)
I will create a true national trade policy like the kind that made America the world’s economic powerhouse. What we were doing prior to the dust coming in from China was … Nobody’s ever seen it. There’s never been anything like it. That period of two and a half years was … There’s never been anything like it. I’ll tell foreign nations where we spend billions of dollars on military protection that if American products do not receive preferential treatment in their markets, our military is packed up and leaving, which some countries I did that with.
(01:27:16)
Usually it took a phone call and everything was just fine because economic security is national security. I will revoke China’s most favored nation’s trade status immediately on day one, and I will implement a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods and gain total independence from China. We have to do it. We have to do it. I will hold China financially accountable for unleashing the China virus upon the world, and I will again withdraw from the WHO, which stands for We Hide Outbreaks. We Hide Outbreaks. The United States was paying.
(01:28:15)
I think this is important because, again, it’s so much common sense involved. The United States was paying the World Health Organization $450 million a year. Now, in terms of money and the kind of trillions and trillions we’re talking about, it’s not that much, but it’s still $450 million a year. I took them out. That’s what it was. The price was 450, and that’s for 350 million people. China was paying $39 million a year for 1.4 billion people. Doesn’t sound too right, and they had total control, by the way. We had no control. They’d literally own it.
(01:28:57)
When I withdrew from the WHO, they offered me to stay in, “Please don’t leave, please, please, please. But what China pays,” they said, “we’ll bring it down to 39 million.” I was actually close to doing this deal, If you wanted know the truth, but you would have been angry at me. I said, “I don’t don’t want to have CPAC angry at me.” But I might have gone back in, but I could have done it for 39. I could have probably done it for less than that. But now Biden has gone back for the full price of $450 million. Now, all he has to do is read the newspapers. They were begging me to come back in for 39 million, so why would you pay $450 million? Do you understand that? Gordon, do you understand that? How crazy. So China’s in for 39. They’re saying, “You’re right. It’s unfair. It’s unfair. We will do it for 39. We will take you back.” The head man, you know who that is. “We will take you back.” Then I started to say, “Actually, it should be much less. It should be like five or six million, right?” But I didn’t want to go there.
(01:30:01)
“We will take you back for 39 million. You’re right, President.” I said, “Well, we’ll think about it. We’ll see what happens. But the offer will remain open, right?” “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.” They went back in for the original amount. It’s so sad, and we have no control, by the way. China controls WHO. So that’s what it does. WHO is totally controlled by China. We could have saved $400 million a year. It’s a lot of money. Now they’re asking for even more dictatorial power and more and more and more of our money, but they’re getting nothing more from China.
(01:30:40)
When we’re dealing with the Biden administration, it seems that every single day is April Fools’ Day, every day. They want an open border so that anybody can come in, and everybody else wants it to be closed. It’s April Fools’. We want an open border. That’s April Fools’. We want voter ID. They don’t want voter ID. Who wouldn’t want voter ID? 88% of the Democrats, except for the leadership because they can’t cheat with voter ID, but 88% of the Democrats want voter ID, but they don’t want voter ID. It’s April Fools’ Day.
(01:31:31)
They want to take the soldiers out of Afghanistan before we take our people and equipment out, but we want the soldiers to come out last. So then they blow it into a catastrophe, the most embarrassing event in the history of our country. It’s April Fools’ Day. They want all electric cars that don’t go very far. I have a friend. He bought a car. He said, “The car’s wonderful. But I go for an hour and a half and I got to put a charger and I can’t find a charger. I’m going crazy.” Also, all the batteries and everything, the material comes all out of China.
(01:32:14)
We have oil and gas, but we don’t want the oil and gas cars. But we want everything, including electric cars. But we also want gasoline because the cars go longer, and they’re preferred by many people. We don’t like quick drives that are stopped for two and a half hours. It’s April Fools’. They want all electric stoves all over the country, but we don’t have the electric power for that. We want electric stoves, but we also want gas stoves. It’s April Fools’. Why do they want that?
(01:32:58)
They want windmills all over the place that ruin our fields, kill our birds, and are very unreliable and are the most expensive energy ever developed. We want oil, gasoline, natural gas because it’s cheaper, better, and much more powerful. It’s April Fools’ Day. Under my leadership, we will regain energy independence that we had three years ago. We were on our way to massive energy dominance. We would have been paying off our debt because energy is big numbers.
(01:33:33)
It’s not like you’re selling a little product. You’re selling the biggest product of all is energy. We would have been paying off our debt. We would have been the strongest. We were going to be. We were already bigger under my administration, bigger than Saudi Arabia or Russia. We were going to be much bigger than both of them combined. Within about a year, we would have made the kind of money they’re making times five, and we would have been paying off debt and we would have been reducing taxes. It would have been a beautiful thing. But they came in and they said, “We don’t want that.”
(01:34:06)
I will fight for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, and I will move heaven and Earth to fully and finally secure our elections. All Republican governors should immediately go for paper ballots, one-day voting, and voter ID. The problem we have is we have governors, and some of them we like and some of them we don’t, but they’re all talk. Think of it. They control the state. We have a lot of governors. They should go for that, paper ballots, same-day voting.
(01:34:59)
France had 37 million people voting. They voted in one day, and at 10:30 in the evening, they called the winner. There were no problems. They had paper ballots, same-day voting, voter ID. They only had a little mail-in, and we would have this, too, for soldiers that are very far away or people that are legitimately sick, legitimately, as opposed to millions and millions of ballots flooding the offices. They used COVID to cheat. But until that day comes, Republicans must compete using every lawful means to win. That means swamping the left with mail-in votes, early votes, and election day votes. Have to do it.
(01:35:49)
We have to change our thinking because some bad things happened. For some reason, Republicans like to vote on election day, right? The problem is you get there, and they have so many already started. But worse, if you take a look at Kari Lake in Arizona where they waited and waited. “Don’t vote now. Wait till Tuesday. Wait till Tuesday. Wait till Tuesday.” In the Republican areas, a tremendous percentage of the machines were broken, and you couldn’t vote. They had lines that were a mile long all over the place, Republican areas, and they couldn’t vote.
(01:36:28)
They said, “Come back in seven hours.” But people can’t do that. They have Little League. They have doctors. They might love Kari. They might love the Republican party and everything we stand for, but they can’t do that. They were standing in the hot sun for hours and hours. And then they sent in mechanics to fix them, and when the mechanics left, they were far worse. They lose those cases in courts because our judges have no courage to do what’s right. They have no courage to do what’s right.
(01:36:56)
I can tell you that was the case in 2022, where we can’t get rid of drop boxes. We need them in every church. What we have to do, we have to put our own drop boxes in. Zucker Bucks spent $500 million. If you contribute $5,700, $1 more than that, to a candidate, they put you in jail. This guy gave $500 million for all of this crap that they were doing shenanigans. They were handing out the money like it was candy, and that’s fine, but people are going to jail for spending like $93 too much because it’s not according to election law.
(01:37:46)
Until we can eliminate ballot harvesting, we will become masters at ballot harvesting. We have no choice, beating the Democrats at their own game. We’ll do it legally. The agenda I’ve laid out today will end America’s destruction, but it is not enough just to stop the forces tearing America down. I want once again to build America up. We have to build our country. We don’t build anymore. All we do is investigate everybody.
(01:38:20)
You ever see television? It used to be we’d build our military. We were proud of it. We’d be doing all things. All you see on the thing, investigation, investigation, investigation. Now, with that being said, you got to look at Hunter. I mean how crooked is that deal? But it’s not something I really … I’d like to get back to building our country and making our country great again, but it’s time to start talking about greatness for our country.
(01:38:50)
Our objective will be a quantum leap in the American standard of living, especially for our young people. As I announced yesterday, we will hold a competition to build new freedom cities on the frontier to give countless Americans a new shot at home ownership and the American dream. It’s such a wonderful, beautiful thing. I’ll challenge the governors of all 50 states, all 50 states, to join me in a great beautification campaign. We will rename our schools and boulevards not after communists, but after great American patriots. We will get rid of bad and ugly buildings in return to the magnificent classical style of western civilization. We will support baby boomers, and we will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom. How does that sound? I want a baby boom. Oh, you men are so lucky out there. You’re so lucky. You are so lucky, men. Our country will shine, thrive, and prosper like never before. All of this is within our reach, but only if we have the courage to complete the job, gut the deep state, reclaim our democracy, and banish the tyrants and Marxists into political exile forever.
(01:40:26)
They are bad for us. They want us to fail. They want our country to go down. They are sick people. Change only happens if we plow fearlessly ahead and declare with one voice that the era of woke and weaponized government is over. That is our task. That is our mission. This is the turning point and the time for that decision because, as you’ve probably heard me say before, we will not back down. We will not bend. We will not quit. We will not yield. We will press forward with push. We will press forward with vigor. We will push onward, and we will finish what we started.
(01:41:14)
We started a great, great, positive revolution. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it before. It’s called Make America Great Again. We want to make America great again. We will cross the finish line. We will dismantle the deep state. We will demolish woke tyranny, and we will restore the American republic to all of its radiant glory, and with God’s help and your support, we will make America powerful again. We want to have a powerful country. We need to have a powerful country.
(01:41:58)
We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. That’s what we want. We want strength. Think of your heart pounding, we will make America proud again. We will make America safe again, not like our streets of the cities which are a disgrace for the entire world to watch, and we will make America great again. Thank you very much, CPAC. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.
John F Kennedy: ' We shall achieve that peace only with patience and perseverance and courage', Remarks at Veterans Day Ceremony - 1961
11 November 1961, Arlington cemetery, Washington DC, USA
General Gavan, Mr. Gleason, members of the military forces, veterans, fellow Americans:
Today we are here to celebrate and to honor and to commemorate the dead and the living, the young men who in every war since this country began have given testimony to their loyalty to their country and their own great courage.
I do not believe that any nation in the history of the world has buried its soldiers farther from its native soil than we Americans--or buried them closer to the towns in which they grew up.
We celebrate this Veterans Day for a very few minutes, a few seconds of silence and then this country's life goes on. But I think it most appropriate that we recall on this occasion, and on every other moment when we are faced with great responsibilities, the contribution and the sacrifice which so many men and their families have made in order to permit this country to now occupy its present position of responsibility and freedom, and in order to permit us to gather here together.
Bruce Catton, after totaling the casualties which took place in the battle of Antietam, not so very far from this cemetery, when he looked at statistics which showed that in the short space of a few minutes whole regiments lost 50 to 75 percent of their numbers, then wrote that life perhaps isn't the most precious gift of all, that men died for the possession of a few feet of a corn field or a rocky hill, or for almost nothing at all. But in a very larger sense, they died that this country might be permitted to go on, and that it might permit to be fulfilled the great hopes of its founders.
In a world tormented by tension and the possibilities of conflict, we meet in a quiet commemoration of an historic day of peace. In an age that threatens the survival of freedom, we join together to honor those who made our freedom possible. The resolution of the Congress which first proclaimed Armistice Day, described November 11, 1918, as the end of "the most destructive, sanguinary and far-reaching war in the history of human annals." That resolution expressed the hope that the First World War would be, in truth, the war to end all wars. It suggested that those men who had died had therefore not given their lives in vain.
It is a tragic fact that these hopes have not been fulfilled, that wars still more destructive and still more sanguinary followed, that man's capacity to devise new ways of killing his fellow men have far outstripped his capacity to live in peace with his fellow men.
Some might say, therefore, that this day has lost its meaning, that the shadow of the new and deadly weapons have robbed this day of its great value, that whatever name we now give this day, whatever flags we fly or prayers we utter, it is too late to honor those who died before, and too soon to promise the living an end to organized death.
But let us not forget that November 11, 1918, signified a beginning, as well as an end. "The purpose of all war," said Augustine, "is peace." The First World War produced man's first great effort in recent times to solve by international cooperation the problems of war. That experiment continues in our present day--still imperfect, still short of its responsibilities, but it does offer a hope that some day nations can live in harmony.
For our part, we shall achieve that peace only with patience and perseverance and courage--the patience and perseverance necessary to work with allies of diverse interests but common goals, the courage necessary over a long period of time to overcome an adversary skilled in the arts of harassment and obstruction.
There is no way to maintain the frontiers of freedom without cost and commitment and risk. There is no swift and easy path to peace in our generation. No man who witnessed the tragedies of the last war, no man who can imagine the unimaginable possibilities of the next war, can advocate war out of irritability or frustration or impatience.
But let no nation confuse our perseverance and patience with fear of war or unwillingness to meet our responsibilities. We cannot save ourselves by abandoning those who are associated with us, or rejecting our responsibilities.
In the end, the only way to maintain the peace is to be prepared in the final extreme to fight for our country--and to mean it.
As a nation, we have little capacity for deception. We can convince friend and foe alike that we are in earnest about the defense of freedom only if we are in earnest-and I can assure the world that we are.
This cemetery was first established 97 years ago. In this hill were first buried men who died in an earlier war, a savage war here in our own country. Ninety-seven years ago today, the men in Gray were retiring from Antietam, where thousands of their comrades had fallen between dawn and dusk in one terrible day. And the men in Blue were moving towards Fredericksburg, where thousands would soon lie by a stone wall in heroic and sometimes miserable death.
It was a crucial moment in our Nation's history, but these memories, sad and proud, these quiet grounds, this Cemetery and others like it all around the world, remind us with pride of our obligation and our opportunity.
On this Veterans Day of 1961, on this day of remembrance, let us pray in the name of those who have fought in this country's wars, and most especially who have fought in the First World War and in the Second World War, that there will be no veterans of any further war--not because all shall have perished but because all shall have learned to live together in peace.
And to the dead here in this cemetery we say:
They are the race--
they are the race immortal,
Whose beams make broad
the common light of day!
Though Time may dim,
though Death has barred their portal,
These we salute,
which nameless passed away.
Roland Burris: 'So let us pay tribute to the suffering of our forefathers by seeking justice for our children', Juneteenth resolution - 2010
16 June 2010, US Senate, Washington DC, USA
On a hot day in the summer of 1776, delegates from across the American colonies gathered in Philadelphia to cast off the yoke of tyranny and assert the fundamental right of self-government.
That moment, a republic was born, our founders ratified a document unique to human history which contained the landmark words, and i quote -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." end of quote.
This simple creed became the justification of a great revolutionary war which gave rise to the thriving democracy we inhabit today. Mr. President, that's why we celebrate every Fourth of July as independence day, because of the principles laid out in that remarkable declaration.
But tragically, almost a century after that document was ratified, the equality of all men remain an unfulfilled promise. It began to seem that the declaration of independence defined our aspirations rather than our core beliefs. Slavery, brutal and unjust, remained legal throughout the majority of the 19th century and helped set the stage for the bloodiest war we have ever known.
As President Lincoln had dearly hoped, out of that terrible violence was born a new and more complete freedom, a freedom that wiped out the scourge of slavery once and for all and realized a promise our founding fathers documented for all Americans. Mr. President, that is why on Saturday, many in this country observe another independence day known as Juneteenth.
Slavery ended in the confederate states of America when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Many slaves did not learn of their freedom until much later. Finally, on June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas. They brought news that must have been almost unbelievable to all who heard it. The Civil War was over, they announced that all slaves were free.
From that day on, former slaves in the southwest celebrated June 19 as the anniversary for their emancipation. That is why i have introduced a Senate resolution observing the historical significance of this date, Juneteenth, independence day.
Over the past 145 years, Juneteenth celebrations have been held to honor African-American freedom, but this date has come to hold even greater significance. Throughout the world, Juneteenth celebrations lifted up the spirit of freedom and railed against the forces of oppression.
At long last, this day is beginning to be recognized as both a national event and a global celebration. Just as the Fourth of July marks the beginning of a journey that continues even today, we must not forget that the long march to freedom that started on june 19 is far from over.
Our country has made great strides in the century and a half since slavery was abolished, but deep wounds are slow to heal. We will never be able to rewrite this terrible history, but we can and we must, Mr. President, do everything we can to rise above it, to seek constructive solutions to the problems that time alone cannot wash away, problems that still affect the African-american communities on a daily basis, from discrimination to crime to health care disparities to unemployment and to substance abuse and so on.
So let us pay tribute to the suffering of our forefathers by seeking justice for our children. Let us remember our past by looking to our future and confronting these problems with bold new solutions. This is the day for all of us to stand together and lift up the liberties we hold so dear, a day to look forward, look ahead to tomorrow and continue to fight for freedom and equality.
So i ask my colleagues to stand with me. I ask them to support my resolution observing the historical significance of Juneteenth, independence day. I invite them to share in the joy of those who greeted union soldiers in Galveston more than 140 years ago. Mr. President, very briefly, on another subject, in terms of President Obama's speech last night on the crisis in the Gulf, i just want to let it be known for the record that i support our president in that speech and every effort that he has made in trying to give direction and a solution to the problems that we're experiencing down on our Gulf coast, and i find it disheartening and disappointing that all of these commentators who want to attack our President, want him to be angry, want him to act -- i have no idea what they want this man to do, but i know that this man is doing all he can for the people of America, and i ask those commentators to get off of his back.
Stop attacking the President who had nothing to do with that problem and is putting everything he has, the resources that America has to solve this problem. This has never happened before in our history. It's a problem beyond comprehension. Yet still these Monday morning quarterbacks set back and criticize and bring out their undocumented types of statements about our President. I just feel emotionally disturbed by what is happening.
So i say to all Americans this President is doing all he can to support this issue that we are facing. And you have got to deal with BP. , you have got to deal with Transocean and you have to deal with Haliburtan. Those are the ones that are responsible for this problem. Let's go after them, make them pay, make them deal -- get the solution, and therefore Americans can move forward.
Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor, and i suggest the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.
Abraham Lincoln: 'Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection' Inaugural speech - 1861
4 March 1861, Washington DC, USA
Fellow-citizens of the United States:
In compliance with a custom as old as the government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of this office."
I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement.
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property, and their peace, and personal security, are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this, and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves, and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."
I now reiterate these sentiments; and in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause -- as cheerfully to one section as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it, for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the law-giver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution -- to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause, "shall be delivered," their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law, by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by state authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him, or to others, by which authority it is done. And should any one, in any case, be content that his oath shall go unkept, on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?
Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well, at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States"?
I take the official oath to-day, with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws, by any hypercritical rules. And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to, and abide by, all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.
It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our national Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens, have, in succession, administered the executive branch of the government. They have conducted it through many perils; and, generally, with great success. Yet, with all this scope for [of] precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years, under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.
I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever -- it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade, by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it -- break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution, was "to form a more perfect Union." But if [the] destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union, -- that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it, so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner, direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.
In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion -- no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality, shall be so great and so universal, as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable with all, that I deem it better to forego, for the time, the uses of such offices.
The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible, the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection. The course here indicated will be followed, unless current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper; and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised according to circumstances actually existing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles, and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections.
That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events, and are glad of any pretext to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak?
Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step, while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to, are greater than all the real ones you fly from? Will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?
All profess to be content in the Union, if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not. Happily the human mind is so constituted, that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers, a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution -- certainly would, if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities, and of individuals, are so plainly assured to them, by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the territories? The Constitution does not expressly say.
From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. There is no other alternative; for continuing the government, is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority, in such case, will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which, in turn, will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments, are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this.
Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession?
Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.
I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a suit; as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be over-ruled, and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections, than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction, in one section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all, by the other.
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory, after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it.
I will venture to add that to me the Convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them to take or reject propositions, originated by others, not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution, which amendment, however, I have not seen, has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.
The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose; but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.
Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope, in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth, and that justice, will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.
By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals.
While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well, upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied, hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Mary Ann Shadd Cary: 'Break every yoke and let the oppressed go free', antil slavery sermon - 1858
6 April 1858, Chatham, Canada
Cary was born into an affluent free black family in Wilmington, Delaware. Nonetheless after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Shadd joined thousands of other African Americans in emigrating to Canada. She was a vocal abolitionist.
1st business of life, to love the Lord our God with heart and soul, and our neighbor as our self.—
We must then manifest love to God by obedience to his will—we must be cheerful workers in his cause at all times—on the Sabbath and other days[.] The more readiness we evince the more we manifest our love, and as our field is directly among those of his creatures made in his own image in acting as themself who is no respecter of persons we must have failed in our duty until we become decided to waive all prejudices of Education[,] birth nation or training and make the test of our obedience God’s Equal command to love the neighbor as ourselves.—
These two great commandments, and upon which rest all the Law and the prophets, cannot be narrowed down to suit us but we must go up and conform to them. They proscribe neither nation nor sex—our neighbor may be either the oriental heathen the degraded European or the [en]slaved colored American. Neither must we prefer sex[,] the slave mother as well as the slave-father. The oppress[ed], or nominally free woman of every nation or clime in whose soul is as evident by the image of God as in her more fortunate co[n]temporary of the male sex has a claim upon us by virtue of that irrevocable command equally as urgent. We cannot successfully evade duty because the suffering fellow woman be is only a woman! She too is a neighbor. The good samaritan of this generation must not take for their exemplars the priest and the Levite when a fellow wom[an] is among thieves—neither will they find their excuse in the custom as barbarous and anti-christian [sic] as any promulgated by pious Brahmin that they may be only females. The spirit of true philanthropy knows no sex. The true christian [sic] will not seek to exhume from the grave of the past its half developed customs and insist upon them as a substitute for the plain teachings of Jesus Christ, and the evident deductions of a more enlightened humanity.
There is too a fitness of time for any work for the benefit of God’s human creatures. We are told to keep Holy the Sabbath day. In what manner? Not by following simply the injunctions of those who bind heavy burdens, to say nothing about the same but as a man is better than a sheep but combining with God, worship the most active vigilance for the resur[r]ector from degradation[,] violence[,] and sin his creatures. In these cases particularly was the Sabbath made for man and woman if you please as there may be those who will not accept the term man in a generic sense. Christ has told us as it is lawful to lift a sheep out of the ditch on the Sabbath day, if a man is much better than a sheep.
Those with whom I am identified, namely the colored people of this country—and the women of the land are in the pit[,] figuratively[,] are cast out. These were God[’]s requirements during the Prophecy of Isaiah and they are in full force today. God is the same yesterday[,] today[,] and forever. And upon this nation and to this people they come with all their significance[.] Within your grasp are three or four millions in chains in your southern territory and among and around about you are half a million allied to them by blood and to you by blood as were the Hebrew servants who realize the intensity of your hatred and oppression. You are the government[.] What it does to you enslaves the poor whites[,] [t]he free colored people[,] [t]he example of slave holders to accep[t] all.
What we aim to do is to put away this evil from among you and thereby pay a debt you now owe to humanity and to God[,] and so turn from their chan[n]el the bitter waters of a moral servitude that is about overwhelming yourselves.
I speak plainly because of a common origin and because were it not for the monster slavery we would have a common destiny here—in the land of our birth. And because the policy of the American government so singularly set aside al[l]ows to all free speech and free thought: As the law of God must be to us the higher law in spite of powers[,] principalities[,] selfish priests[,] or selfish people to whom the minister it is important that we assert boldly that no where does God look upon this the chief of crimes with the least degree of allowance nor are we justified in asserting that he will tolerate those who in any wise support or sustain it.
Slavery[,] American slavery[,] will not bear moral tests. It [exists] by striking down all the moral safeguards to society—[but] it is not then a moral institution. You are called upon as a man to deny and disobey the most noble impulses of manhood to aid a brother in distress—to refuse to strike from the limbs of those not bound for any crime the fetters by which his escape is obstructed. The milk of human kindness must be transformed into the bitter waters of hatred—you must return to his master he that hath escaped, no matter how every principle of manly independence revolts at the same. This feeling extends to every one allied by blood to the slave. And while we have in the North those who stand as guards to the institution the[y] must also volunteer as shippers away of the nominally free. You must drive from this home by a h[e]artless ostracism to the heathen shores when they fasted, bowed themselves, and spread sack cloth and ashes under them. Made long prayers &c[.] that they might be seen of men, but Isaiah told them God would not accept them. They must repent of their sins—put away iniquity from among them and then should their lights shine forth.
But we are or may be told that slavery is only an evil[,] not a sin, and that too by those who say it was allowed among the Jews and therefore ought to be endured. Isaiah sets that matter to rest[.] [H]e shows that it is a sin handling it less delicately than many prophets in this generation. These are the sins that we are to spare[,] not the sin of enslaving men—of keeping back the hire of the laborer. You are to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens[,] to break every yoke and to let the oppressed go free. To deal out bread to the hungry and to bring the poor [ . . . ] speaking. Their cry has long been ascending to the Lord who then will assume the responsibility of prescribing times and seasons and for the pleading of their cause—[and of] righteous causes—and who shall overrule the voice of woman? Emphatically the greatest sufferer from chattel slavery or political proscription on this God’s footstool? Say we have Christ’s example who heal[e]d the sexes indiscriminately thereby implying an equal inheritance—who rebuffed the worldling Martha and approved innovator Mary. The Him who respecteth not persons but who imposes Christian duties alike upon all sexes, and who in his wise providence metes out his retribution alike upon all.
So friends we suffer the oppressors of the age to lead us astray; instead of going to the source of truth for guidance we let the adversary guide us as to what is our duty and God[’]s word. The Jews thought to[o] that they were doing [H]is requirements when they did only that which was but a small sacrifice.
Theodopre Roosevelt: 'The new nationalism', Osawatomie speech - 1910
August 1910, Osawatomie, Kansas, USA
We come here today to commemorate one of the epoch-making events of the long struggle for the rights of man--the long struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our country--this great Republic-means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is why the history of America is now the central feature of the history of the world; for the world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.
There have been two great crises in our country’s history: first, when it was formed, and then, again, when it was perpetuated; and, in the second of these great crises--in the time of stress and strain which culminated in the Civil War, on the outcome of which depended the justification of what had been done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, you men who fought through the Civil War, not only did you justify your generation, but you justified the wisdom of Washington and Washington’s colleagues. If this Republic had been founded by them only to be split asunder into fragments when the strain came, then the judgment of the world would have been that Washington’s work was not worth doing. It was you who crowned Washington’s work, as you carried to achievement the high purpose of Abraham Lincoln.
Now, with this second period of our history the name of John Brown will forever be associated; and Kansas was the theatre upon which the first act of the second of our great national life dramas was played. It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; that the great experiment of democratic government on a national scale should succeed and not fail. In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but more that they may serve as examples for the future.
It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much also of evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the people of the United States as a whole, can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, to remember it without bitterness, and to fix our eyes with pride only on the good that was accomplished. Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed. Looking back, we are all of us now able to do justice to the valor and the disinterestedness and the love of the right, as to each it was given to see the right, shown both by the men of the North and the men of the South in that contest which was finally decided by the attitude of the West. We can admire the heroic valor, the sincerity, the self-devotion shown alike by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray; and our sadness that such men should have to fight one another is tempered by the glad knowledge that ever hereafter their descendants shall be fighting side by side, struggling in peace as well as in war for the uplift of their common country, all alike resolute to raise to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness the nation to which they all belong. As for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, they deserve honor and recognition such as is paid to no other citizens of the Republic; for to them the republic owes it all; for to them it owes its very existence. It is because of what you and your comrades did in the dark years that we of to-day walk, each of us, head erect, and proud that we belong, not to one of a dozen little squabbling contemptible commonwealths, but to the mightiest nation upon which the sun shines.
I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from the historic standpoint. Our interest is primarily in the application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest a half a century ago. It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises. It is half melancholy and half amusing to see the way in which well-meaning people gather to do honor to the men who, in company with John Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and solved the great problems of the nineteenth century, while, at the same time, these same good people nervously shrink from, or frantically denounce, those who are trying to meet the problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was accountable for the successful solution of the problems of Lincoln’s time.
Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said:
"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."
And again:
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a Communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the working man hear his side.
"Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; is a positive good in the world."
And then comes a thoroughly Lincoln-like sentence:
"Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of today. But this wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.
In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.
At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new. All I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the Civil War. I ask that civil life be carried on according to the spirit in which the army was carried on. You never get perfect justice, but the effort in handling the army was to bring to the front the men who could do the job. Nobody grudged promotion to Grant, or Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan, because they earned it. The only complaint was when a man got promotion which he did not earn.
Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.
I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit. And you men of the Grand Army, you want justice for the brave man who fought, and punishment for the coward who shirked his work. Is that not so?
Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice--full, fair, and complete--and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.
There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.
We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.
It has become entirely clear that we must have government supervision of the capitalization, not only of public-service corporations, including, particularly, railways, but of all corporations doing an interstate business. I do not wish to see the nation forced into the ownership of the railways if it can possibly be avoided, and the only alternative is thoroughgoing and effective legislation, which shall be based on a full knowledge of all the facts, including a physical valuation of property. This physical valuation is not needed, or, at least, is very rarely needed, for fixing rates; but it is needed as the basis of honest capitalization.
We have come to recognize that franchises should never be granted except for a limited time, and never without proper provision for compensation to the public. It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, or coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well.
I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.
Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling them in the interest of the public welfare. For that purpose the Federal Bureau of Corporations is an agency of first importance. Its powers, and, therefore, its efficiency, as well as that of the Interstate Commerce Commission, should be largely increased. We have a right to expect from the Bureau of Corporations and from the Interstate Commerce Commission a very high grade of public service. We should be as sure of the proper conduct of the interstate railways and the proper management of interstate business as we are now sure of the conduct and management of the national banks, and we should have as effective supervision in one case as in the other. The Hepburn Act, and the amendment to the act in the shape in which it finally passed Congress at the last session, represent a long step in advance, and we must go yet further.
There is a wide-spread belief among our people that, under the methods of making tariffs which have hitherto obtained, the special interests are too influential. Probably this is true of both the big special interests and the little special interests. These methods have put a premium on selfishness, and, naturally, the selfish big interests have gotten more than their smaller, though equally selfish, brothers. The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration. To this end there must be an expert tariff commission, wholly removed from the possibility of political pressure or of improper business influence. Such a commission can find the real difference between cost of production, which is mainly the difference of labor cost here and abroad. As fast as its recommendations are made, I believe in revising one schedule at a time. A general revision of the tariff almost inevitably leads to logrolling and the subordination of the general public interest to local and special interests.
The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.
No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered-not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective-a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.
The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown to the other nations, which approach us in financial strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and effectively revised as to make it certain that hereafter our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our needs.
It is hardly necessary to me to repeat that I believe in an efficient army and a navy large enough to secure for us abroad that respect which is the surest guaranty of peace. A word of special warning to my fellow citizens who are as progressive as I hope I am. I want them to keep up their interest in our international affairs; and I want them also continually to remember Uncle Sam’s interests abroad. Justice and fair dealings among nations rest upon principles identical with those which control justice and fair dealing among the individuals of which nations are composed, with the vital exception that each nation must do its own part in international police work. If you get into trouble here, you can call for the police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble, he has got to be his own policeman, and I want to see him strong enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations of other people’s in connection with us. I believe in national friendships and heartiest good-will to all nations; but national friendships, like those between men, must be founded on respect as well as on liking, on forbearance as well as upon trust. I should be heartily ashamed of any American who did not try to make the American government act as justly toward the other nations in international relations as he himself would act toward any individual in private relations. I should be heartily ashamed to see us wrong a weaker power, and I should hang my head forever if we tamely suffered wrong from a stronger power.
Of conservation I shall speak more at length elsewhere. Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.
Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few, and here again is another case in which I am accused of taking a revolutionary attitude. People forget now that one hundred years ago there were public men of good character who advocated the nation selling its public lands in great quantities, so that the nation could get the most money out of it, and giving it to the men who could cultivate it for their own uses. We took the proper democratic ground that the land should be granted in small sections to the men who were actually to till it and live on it. Now, with the water-power, with the forests, with the mines, we are brought face to face with the fact that there are many people who will go with us in conserving the resources only if they are to be allowed to exploit them for their benefit. That is one of the fundamental reasons why the special interests should be driven out of politics. Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part.
I have spoken elsewhere also of the great task which lies before the farmers of the country to get for themselves and their wives and children not only the benefits of better farming, but also those of better business methods and better conditions of life on the farm. The burden of this great task will fall, as it should, mainly upon the great organizations of the farmers themselves. I am glad it will, for I believe they are all well able to handle it. In particular, there are strong reasons why the Departments of Agriculture of the various states, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the agricultural colleges and experiment stations should extend their work to cover all phases of farm life, instead of limiting themselves, as they have far too often limited themselves in the past, solely to the question of the production of crops. And now a special word to the farmer. I want to see him make the farm as fine a farm as it can be made; and let him remember to see that the improvement goes on indoors as well as out; let him remember that the farmer’s wife should have her share of thought and attention just as much as the farmer himself.
Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.
But I think we may go still further. The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare. Understand what I say there. Give him a chance, not push him up if he will not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see that he gets a chance to show the worth that is in him. No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so after his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life by which we surround them. We need comprehensive workman’s compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in book-learning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States. Also, friends, in the interest of the working man himself, we need to set our faces like flint against mob-violence just as against corporate greed; against violence and injustice and lawlessness by wage-workers just as much as against lawless cunning and greed and selfish arrogance of employers. If I could ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen, my request would be that, whenever they go in for reform, they remember the two sides, and that they always exact justice from one side as much as from the other. I have small use for the public servant who can always see and denounce the corruption of the capitalist, but who cannot persuade himself, especially before election, to say a word about lawless mob-violence. And I have equally small use for the man, be he a judge on the bench or editor of a great paper, or wealthy and influential private citizen, who can see clearly enough and denounce the lawlessness of mob-violence, but whose eyes are closed so that he is blind when the question is one of corruption of business on a gigantic scale. Also, remember what I said about excess in reformer and reactionary alike. If the reactionary man, who thinks of nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a revolution; and one of my chief fears in connection with progress comes because I do not want to see our people, for lack of proper leadership, compelled to follow men whose intentions are excellent, but whose eyes are a little too wild to make it really safe to trust them. Here in Kansas there is one paper which habitually denounces me as the tool of Wall Street, and at the same time frantically repudiates the statement that I am a Socialist on the ground that that is an unwarranted slander of the Socialists.
National efficiency has many factors. It is a necessary result of the principle of conservation widely applied. In the end, it will determine our failure or success as a nation. National efficiency has to do, not only with natural resources and with men, but it is equally concerned with institutions. The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns only the people of the State; and the nation for that which concerns all the people. There must remain no neutral ground to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid both jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the national legislature fails to do its duty in providing a national remedy, so that the only national activity is the purely negative activity of the judiciary in forbidding the State to exercise power in the premises.
I do not ask for the over centralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism where we work for what concerns our people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike. The National Government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the National Government. The betterment which we seek must be accomplished, I believe, mainly through the National Government.
The American people are right in demanding that New Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems. The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over division of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people.
I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well as human welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the ends are the same; but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property, as you were in the Civil War. I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends; but I rank dividends below human character. Again, I do not have any sympathy with the reformer who says he does not care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare is necessary, for a man must pull his own weight and be able to support his family. I know well that the reformers must not bring upon the people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the ruin. But we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.
If our political institutions were perfect, they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct primary is a step in this direction, if it is associated with a corrupt-services act effective to prevent the advantage of the man willing recklessly and unscrupulously to spend money over his more honest competitor. It is particularly important that all moneys received or expended for campaign purposes should be publicly accounted for, not only after election, but before election as well. Political action must be made simpler, easier, and freer from confusion for every citizen. I believe that the prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent public servants should be made easy and sure in whatever way experience shall show to be most expedient in any given class of cases.
One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.
The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. Just in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound judgment and high ideals, active in public affairs,-but, first of all, sound in their home, and the father and mother of healthy children whom they bring up well,-just so far, and no farther, we may count our civilization a success. We must have-I believe we have already-a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent. Let me again illustrate by a reference to the Grand Army. You could not have won simply as a disorderly and disorganized mob. You needed generals; you needed careful administration of the most advanced type; and a good commissary-the cracker line. You well remember that success was necessary in many different lines in order to bring about general success. You had to have the administration at Washington good, just as you had to have the administration in the field; and you had to have the work of the generals good. You could not have triumphed without the administration and leadership; but it would all have been worthless if the average soldier had not had the right stuff in him. He had to have the right stuff in him, or you could not get it out of him. In the last analysis, therefore, vitally necessary though it was to have the right kind of organization and the right kind of generalship, it was even more vitally necessary that the average soldier should have the fighting edge, the right character. So it is in our civil life. No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives, if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. That is imperative; but it must be an addition to, and not a substitute for, the qualities that make us good citizens. In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character-character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, and a good husband-that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the kind of law and the kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development. The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.
Mitch Landrieu: 'It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it', Address on The Lost Cause of the Confederacy - 2017
19 May 2017, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
New Orleans Mayor Landrieu delivered speech just hours before workers removed a statue of Robert E Lee. That made the fourth Confederate statue to be removed in recent weeks.
Thank you for coming.
The soul of our beloved City is deeply rooted in a history that has evolved over thousands of years; rooted in a diverse people who have been here together every step of the way – for both good and for ill.
It is a history that holds in its heart the stories of Native Americans: the Choctaw, Houma Nation, the Chitimacha. Of Hernando de Soto, Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, the Acadians, the Islenos, the enslaved people from Senegambia, Free People of Color, the Haitians, the Germans, both the empires of Francexii and Spain. The Italians, the Irish, the Cubans, the south and central Americans, the Vietnamese and so many more.
You see: New Orleans is truly a city of many nations, a melting pot, a bubbling cauldron of many cultures.
There is no other place quite like it in the world that so eloquently exemplifies the uniquely American motto: e pluribus unum — out of many we are one.
But there are also other truths about our city that we must confront. New Orleans was America’s largest slave market: a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were brought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to lives of forced labor of misery of rape, of torture.
America was the place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana; where the courts enshrined ‘separate but equal’; where Freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp.
So when people say to me that the monuments in question are history, well what I just described is real history as well, and it is the searing truth.
And it immediately begs the questions: why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks; nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives; the pain, the sacrifice, the shame … all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans.
So for those self-appointed defenders of history and the monuments, they are eerily silent on what amounts to this historical malfeasance, a lie by omission.
There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it. For America and New Orleans, it has been a long, winding road, marked by great tragedy and great triumph. But we cannot be afraid of our truth.
As President George W. Bush said at the dedication ceremony for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”
So today I want to speak about why we chose to remove these four monuments to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, but also how and why this process can move us towards healing and understanding of each other.
So, let’s start with the facts.
The historic record is clear: the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal — through monuments and through other means — to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity.
First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy.
It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots.
These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.
After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city.
Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy.
He said in his now famous ‘Cornerstone speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Now, with these shocking words still ringing in your ears, I want to try to gently peel from your hands the grip on a false narrative of our history that I think weakens us and make straight a wrong turn we made many years ago so we can more closely connect with integrity to the founding principles of our nation and forge a clearer and straighter path toward a better city and more perfect union.
Last year, President Barack Obama echoed these sentiments about the need to contextualize and remember all of our history. He recalled a piece of stone, a slave auction block engraved with a marker commemorating a single moment in 1830 when Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay stood and spoke from it.
President Obama said, “Consider what this artifact tells us about history … on a stone where day after day for years, men and women … bound and bought and sold and bid like cattle on a stone worn down by the tragedy of over a thousand bare feet. For a long time the only thing we considered important, the singular thing we once chose to commemorate as history with a plaque were the unmemorable speeches of two powerful men.”
A piece of stone – one stone. Both stories were history. One story told. One story forgotten or maybe even purposefully ignored.
As clear as it is for me today … for a long time, even though I grew up in one of New Orleans’ most diverse neighborhoods, even with my family’s long proud history of fighting for civil rights … I must have passed by those monuments a million times without giving them a second thought.
So I am not judging anybody, I am not judging people. We all take our own journey on race. I just hope people listen like I did when my dear friend Wynton Marsalis helped me see the truth. He asked me to think about all the people who have left New Orleans because of our exclusionary attitudes.
Another friend asked me to consider these four monuments from the perspective of an African American mother or father trying to explain to their fifth grade daughter who Robert E. Lee is and why he stands atop of our beautiful city. Can you do it?
Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are too?
We all know the answer to these very simple questions.
When you look into this child’s eyes is the moment when the searing truth comes into focus for us. This is the moment when we know what is right and what we must do. We can’t walk away from this truth.
And I knew that taking down the monuments was going to be tough, but you elected me to do the right thing, not the easy thing and this is what that looks like. So relocating these Confederate monuments is not about taking something away from someone else. This is not about politics, this is not about blame or retaliation. This is not a naïve quest to solve all our problems at once.
This is, however, about showing the whole world that we as a city and as a people are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile and, most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves, making straight what has been crooked and making right what was wrong.
Otherwise, we will continue to pay a price with discord, with division, and yes, with violence.
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To literally put the confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future.
History cannot be changed. It cannot be moved like a statue. What is done is done. The Civil War is over, and the Confederacy lost and we are better for it. Surely we are far enough removed from this dark time to acknowledge that the cause of the Confederacy was wrong.
And in the second decade of the 21st century, asking African Americans — or anyone else — to drive by property that they own; occupied by reverential statues of men who fought to destroy the country and deny that person’s humanity seems perverse and absurd.
Centuries-old wounds are still raw because they never healed right in the first place.
Here is the essential truth: we are better together than we are apart. Indivisibility is our essence. Isn’t this the gift that the people of New Orleans have given to the world?
We radiate beauty and grace in our food, in our music, in our architecture, in our joy of life, in our celebration of death; in everything that we do. We gave the world this funky thing called jazz; the most uniquely American art form that is developed across the ages from different cultures.
Think about second lines, think about Mardi Gras, think about muffaletta, think about the Saints, gumbo, red beans and rice. By God, just think. All we hold dear is created by throwing everything in the pot; creating, producing something better; everything a product of our historic diversity.
We are proof that out of many we are one — and better for it! Out of many we are one — and we really do love it!
And yet, we still seem to find so many excuses for not doing the right thing. Again, remember President Bush’s words, “A great nation does not hide its history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.”
We forget, we deny how much we really depend on each other, how much we need each other. We justify our silence and inaction by manufacturing noble causes that marinate in historical denial. We still find a way to say “wait, not so fast.”
But like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “wait has almost always meant never.”
We can’t wait any longer. We need to change. And we need to change now. No more waiting. This is not just about statues, this is about our attitudes and behavior as well. If we take these statues down and don’t change to become a more open and inclusive society this would have all been in vain.
While some have driven by these monuments every day and either revered their beauty or failed to see them at all, many of our neighbors and fellow Americans see them very clearly. Many are painfully aware of the long shadows their presence casts, not only literally but figuratively. And they clearly receive the message that the Confederacy and the cult of the lost cause intended to deliver.
Earlier this week, as the cult of the lost cause statue of P.G.T Beauregard came down, world renowned musician Terence Blanchard stood watch, his wife Robin and their two beautiful daughters at their side.
Terence went to a high school on the edge of City Park named after one of America’s greatest heroes and patriots, John F. Kennedy. But to get there he had to pass by this monument to a man who fought to deny him his humanity.
He said, “I’ve never looked at them as a source of pride … it’s always made me feel as if they were put there by people who don’t respect us. This is something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It’s a sign that the world is changing.”
Yes, Terence, it is, and it is long overdue.
Now is the time to send a new message to the next generation of New Orleanians who can follow in Terence and Robin’s remarkable footsteps.
A message about the future, about the next 300 years and beyond; let us not miss this opportunity New Orleans and let us help the rest of the country do the same. Because now is the time for choosing. Now is the time to actually make this the City we always should have been, had we gotten it right in the first place.
We should stop for a moment and ask ourselves — at this point in our history, after Katrina, after Rita, after Ike, after Gustav, after the national recession, after the BP oil catastrophe and after the tornado — if presented with the opportunity to build monuments that told our story or to curate these particular spaces … would these monuments be what we want the world to see? Is this really our story?
We have not erased history; we are becoming part of the city’s history by righting the wrong image these monuments represent and crafting a better, more complete future for all our children and for future generations.
And unlike when these Confederate monuments were first erected as symbols of white supremacy, we now have a chance to create not only new symbols, but to do it together, as one people.
In our blessed land we all come to the table of democracy as equals.
We have to reaffirm our commitment to a future where each citizen is guaranteed the uniquely American gifts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That is what really makes America great and today it is more important than ever to hold fast to these values and together say a self-evident truth that out of many we are one. That is why today we reclaim these spaces for the United States of America.
Because we are one nation, not two; indivisible with liberty and justice for all, not some. We all are part of one nation, all pledging allegiance to one flag, the flag of the United States of America. And New Orleanians are in, all of the way.
It is in this union and in this truth that real patriotism is rooted and flourishes.
Instead of revering a 4-year brief historical aberration that was called the Confederacy we can celebrate all 300 years of our rich, diverse history as a place named New Orleans and set the tone for the next 300 years.
After decades of public debate, of anger, of anxiety, of anticipation, of humiliation and of frustration. After public hearings and approvals from three separate community led commissions. After two robust public hearings and a 6-1 vote by the duly elected New Orleans City Council. After review by 13 different federal and state judges. The full weight of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government has been brought to bear and the monuments in accordance with the law have been removed.
So now is the time to come together and heal and focus on our larger task. Not only building new symbols, but making this city a beautiful manifestation of what is possible and what we as a people can become.
Let us remember what the once exiled, imprisoned and now universally loved Nelson Mandela and what he said after the fall of apartheid. “If the pain has often been unbearable and the revelations shocking to all of us, it is because they indeed bring us the beginnings of a common understanding of what happened and a steady restoration of the nation’s humanity.”
So before we part let us again state the truth clearly.
The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered.
As a community, we must recognize the significance of removing New Orleans’ Confederate monuments. It is our acknowledgment that now is the time to take stock of, and then move past, a painful part of our history. Anything less would render generations of courageous struggle and soul-searching a truly lost cause.
Anything less would fall short of the immortal words of our greatest President Abraham Lincoln, who with an open heart and clarity of purpose calls on us today to unite as one people when he said:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to do all which may achieve and cherish: a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Thank you.
Abraham Lincoln: 'Let us bind up the nation's wounds', Second Inaugural address - 1865
4 March, 1865, Library of Congress, Washington DC, USA
Fellow Countrymen
At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the enerergies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it -- all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war -- seeking to dissole the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern half part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said f[our] three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Abraham Lincoln: 'I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free' A House Divided speech - 1858
16 June, 1858, State House, Springfield, Illinois
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination -- piece of machinery so to speak -- compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidence of design and concert of action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.
But, so far, Congress only, had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition.
Four days later, commenced the struggle, which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition.
This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.
This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right of self government," which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man, choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.
That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or state, not to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."
Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "Squatter Sovereignty," and "Sacred right of self-government."
"But," said opposition members, "let us be more specific -- let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment.
While the Nebraska Bill was passing through congress, a law case involving the question of a negroe's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free state and then a territory covered by the congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave, for a long time in each, was passing through the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and law suit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negroe's name was "Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made in the case.
Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requests the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."
The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory.
The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible, echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement.
The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument.
The Presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever might be.
Then, in a few days, came the decision.
The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott Decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it.
The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained.
At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that squabble the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind -- the principle for which he declares he has suffered much, and is ready to suffer to the end.
And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle, is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding -- like the mould at the foundry served through one blast and fell back into loose sand -- helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point, the right of a people to make their own constitution, upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.
The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas' "care-not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained.The working points of that machinery are:
First, that no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.
This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of this provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that--
"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."
Secondly, that "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory.
This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future.
Thirdly, that whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free State, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the master.
This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.
Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, to not care whether slavery is voted down or voted up.
This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.
It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free" "subject only to the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people, to be just no freedom at all.
Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.
Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator's individual opinion withheld, till after the presidential election? Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would have damaged the "perfectly free" argument upon which the election was to be carried.
Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision?
These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse, preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall.
And why the hasty after indorsements of the decision by the President and others?
We can not absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance -- and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few -- not omitting even scaffolding -- or, if a single piece be lacking, we can see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in -- in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.
It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska Bill, the people of a State, as well as Territory, were to be left "perfectly free" "subject only to the Constitution."
Why mention a State? They were legislating for territories, and not for or about States. Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of a territory and the people of a state therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same?
While the opinion of the Court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a state, or the people of a State, to exclude it.
Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a state to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Macy sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a territory, into the Nebraska bill -- I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down, in the one case, as it had been in the other.
The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion his exact language is, "except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction."
In what cases the power of the states is so restrained by the U.S. Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question, as to the restraint on the power of the territories was left open in the Nebraska act. Put that and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits.
And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision an be maintained when made.
Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.
Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown.
We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.
To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation.
This is what we have to do.
But how can we best do it?
There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is, with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the facts, that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us, on a single point, upon which, he and we, have never differed.
They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" to care nothing about it.
A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas' superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade.
Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And, unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia.
He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade -- how can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free" -- unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday -- that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong.
But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference?
Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas' position, question his motives, or do ought that can be personally offensive to him.
Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle.
But clearly, he is not now with us -- he does not pretend to be -- he does not promise to ever be.
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by its own undoubted friends -- those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work -- who do care for the result.
Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong.
We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us.
Of strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy.
Did we brave all then to falter now? -- now -- when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent?
The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail -- if we stand firm, we shall not fail.
Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later the victory is sure to come.
Actor Danny Glover reads abolitionist Frederick Douglass's "Fourth of July Speech, 1852" on October 5, 2005 in Los Angeles, California. Part of a reading from Voices of a People's History of the United States (Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove.)
Frederick Douglass: 'What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?', 'The Hypocrisy of American Slavery' - 1852
4 July, 1852, Rochester, New York, USA
Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"
To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.
Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.
What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Abraham Lincoln: 'Four score and seven years ago', Gettysburg Address - 1863
“That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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