The Value of the Delaration

"These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' .... They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. .... [T]hey established these great self-evident truths that .... their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their father began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land .... Now my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrine conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence ... let me entreat you to come back .... [C]ome back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence."

~Abraham Lincoln