...coercion was, Lincoln said, "essentially a People's contest. ... a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form and substance of government, whose leading...start, and a fair chance, in the race of life"— Lincoln, Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4, 1861, SW, 1859-1865, 259. 53 "I have never...

...i989), pp. 83- 85. « « test. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading...unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life."25 By December, in his first annual message to Congress, Lincoln had finally managed to clarify...

..."leading object" of government. In a message to Congress in special session on July 4, 1861, he asserts, to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial...unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life. Where charity and liberty most naturally meet is in the eradication of artificial handicaps, like slavery,...

...foes." It was "a People's contest," he said, in which the Union represented the best hope in the world "to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial...unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life." "A People's Contest" 201 Fourth of July report was accepted with equanimity by the Republicancontrolled...

...chance, in the race of life," To Lincoln's mind, the fundamental test of a democracy was its capacity to "elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, and to clear paths of laudable pursuit for all," A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those...

...essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading...of the government for whose existence we contend. "Elevate the condition of men" — this was President Lincoln's vision from boyhood to his last breath....

...people's contest," he proclaimed, "On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading...unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life."14 These basic ideas were shared by Roosevelt. Believing that Americans living in the early twentieth...

...essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading...afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance 293. See Richard M. Current, Lincoln and the First Shot (Philadelphia, 1963), pp. 190203; Richard J....

...that all men are created equal — was on its way to becoming the country that Lincoln had foreseen: "whose leading object is to elevate the condition...unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." The capitalism that roared out of the Civil War had its victims and dark consequences, of course, as...

...dimension to it. Lincoln said in that first presidential message that the Union was fighting to maintain "that form and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all—to...