File:Abraham Lincoln and the downfall of American slavery (1914) (14786832573).jpg

Identifier: abrahamlincolnd00broo (find matches)
Title: Abraham Lincoln and the downfall of American slavery
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Brooks, Noah, 1830-1903
Subjects: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 Presidents Slaves Slavery
Publisher: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection
Digitizing Sponsor: State of Indiana through the Indiana State Library

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f the world. This lecture was notintended to be taken in cold-blooded earnest, but as a bitof pleasantry, mixed with much sober fact. The temper-ance address, however, was a serious composition. Lin-coln never, even to the day of his death, could be per-suaded to partake of spirits or wine. He set out in life,surrounded by drunkards and moderate tipplers, deter-mined that he would resist the temptation to drink ofthese insidious beverages. He made no promises, but,after a few years of manhood (as he used to say), whenhis associates had become accustomed to his abstemioushabits, he had neither temptation nor desire to drink.That part of Lincolns lecture which was delivered in theSecond Presbyterian Church, Springfield, February 22,1842, that refers to the drinking usages of society, is in-teresting. He said: Let us see. I have not inquired at what period of time theuse of intoxicating liquors commenced ; nor is it important tokpow. It is sufficient that to all of us who now inhabit the
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MEE/S MARTIN VAN BUREN. t,, world, the practice of drinking them is just as old as the worlditself—that is, we have seen the one just as long as we haveseen the other. When all such of us as have now reached theyears of maturity first opened our eyes upon the stage of exist-ence, we found intoxicating liquor recognized by everybody,used by everybody, repudiated by nobody. It commonlyentered into the first draught of the infant, and the last draughtof the dying man. From the sideboard of the parson downto the ragged pocket of the homeless loafer, it was constantlyfound. Physicians prescribed it in this, that, and the otherdisease ; government provided it for soldiers and sailors; andto have a rolling or raising, a husking or hoe-down any-where about without it was positively insufferable. So, too, it waseverywhere a respectable article of manufacture and merchan-dise. The making of it was regarded as an honorable liveli-hood, and he who could make most was the most enterprisingand re

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