Abraham Lincoln and the 4th of July

In 1838, Lincoln spoke at a Lyceum to a group of young men in Springfield, Illinois, on the status of America’s unique experiment as a democratic republic. These young American men called their meeting place a Lyceum out of respect for the Athenian men who, more than 2,000 years before them, first debated the complexities of freedom in the original Lyceum, an edifice in ancient Athens for philosophical discussion.

The specific subject for the evening was: The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions.

That “perpetuation” subject was urgently relevant to these young men who believed (22 years before the Civil War) that American Political Institutions were in imminent jeopardy.  The jeopardy was the increasing violence and disregard of law, both above and below…