973.7L63 
 
 PL569 „ 
 
 A Letter of Abraham Lincolr 
 m reply to an invitation to at- 
 tend a festival in honor of the 
 birthday of Thomas Jefferson 
 (Apr. 6, 1859) [printed 1923] 3pp. 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
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 6 Lincoln's Jefferson Letter No, 
 
 ^ 
 
^ Letter of 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 in reply to 
 
 <iAn Invitation to attend a Festival in Honor of 
 the Birthday of Thomas Jefferson 
 
 Composed direftly from the original letter, now in the John Hay Mem- 
 orial J^ibrary at ^rown University y and twenty -five copies printed in 
 this form at the ^MoorsfaldTrefs, Qhamplainy J^ T., June 19, 1923 
 
 Springfield, Ills. April 6, 1859 
 Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others. 
 gentlemen 
 
 Your kind note inviting me 
 to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th Ins't in 
 honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly 
 received- My engagements afe such that I can not 
 attend - 
 
 Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two 
 great political parties were first formed in this country, 
 that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, 
 and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both 
 curious and interesting that those supposed to descend 
 politically from the party opposed to Jefferson, should 
 now be celebrating his birth-day in their own original 
 seat of empire, while those claiming political descent 
 from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name 
 everywhere- 
 
 m^ 
 
Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were 
 formed upon their supposed superior devotion to the 
 personal rights of [of] men, holding the rights o^ prop- 
 erty to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then 
 assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are 
 the Jefferson, and their opponents, the an ti- Jefferson 
 parties, it will be equally interesting to note how com- 
 pletely the two have changed hands as to the principle 
 upon which they were originally supposed to be divided. 
 
 The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man 
 to be absolutely nothing, when in conflid: with another 
 man's right oi property- Republicans, on the contrary, 
 are for both the man and the dollars but in cases of 
 conflid:, the man before the dollar- 
 
 I remember once being much amused at seeing two 
 partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight with their 
 great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather 
 harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself 
 out of his own coat, and into that of the other- If the 
 two leading parties of this day are really identical with 
 the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have 
 performed about the same feat as the two drunken 
 men- 
 
 But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the 
 principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this 
 nation. 
 
 One would start with great confidence that he could 
 convince any sane child that the simpler propositions 
 of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, 
 utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and 
 
axioms- The principles of Jefferson are the definitions 
 and axioms of free society- And yet they are denied, 
 and evaded, with no small show of success- One dash- 
 ingly calls them "glittering generalities;" another 
 bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others 
 insidiously argue that they apply only to "superior 
 
 races "- 
 
 These expressions, differing in form, are identical 
 in objed and effed — the supplanting the principles of 
 free government, and restoring those of classification, 
 caste, and legitimacy- They would delight a convoca- 
 tion of crowned heads, plotting against the people- 
 They are the van-guard — the miners, and sappers — of 
 returning despotism- We must repulse them, or they 
 will subjugate us- 
 
 This is a world of compensations; and he who would 
 he no slave, must consent to have no slave- Those 
 who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for them- 
 selves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it. 
 
 All honor to Jefferson — to the man who, in the 
 concrete pressure of a struggle for national independ- 
 ence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and 
 capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary doc- 
 ument, an abstrad: truth, applicable to all men and all 
 times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in 
 all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling- 
 block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyrany 
 and oppression- 
 
 Your obedient Servant 
 
 A. Lincoln- 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLIN0I3-URBANA 
 
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