Abraham Lincoln facedown

By Edward Achorn

Abraham Lincoln’s statues dot the landscape for a reason that is well-understood: He is a symbol of wisdom, decency, sacrifice, and perseverance in defeating slavery and liberating millions of black Americans.

Antifa rioters knocked down his statue in Portland during a self-proclaimed “Day of Rage” on the eve of Columbus Day.

They also trashed the Oregon Historical Society, which preserves treasures of the past so that people of succeeding generations may understand their culture and history.

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Riots and the danger to America

By Edward Achorn

A 28-year-old country lawyer made a prescient observation in an 1837 address in Springfield, Illinois. He argued that, given its strengths, free America could only be destroyed from within.

“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!—All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years,” the young lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, asserted.

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

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