All Men are created Equal

This past Memorial Day my wife and I watched a program that showed a picture of the Lincoln Memorial.

This writing contains the thoughts aroused by that picture.



    What are their thoughts as they climb the ninety-two steps to the base of the sculpture?
      What emotions are stirred as they look upon the nineteen foot high sculpture of the great Emancipator?

      I would be remiss if I were to attempt to disclose those thoughts and emotions so instead I would like to share with you mine.

      This monument, more so than the others in Washington, speaks to me, reaches out and touches my very soul.

      These are those words.

      I have walked the fields of Indiana, climbed the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, I’ve walked the back roads coming out of those mountains down into the valleys.
      I have stood at a place called Gettysburg.

      Gettysburg, a place forever stained with the blood of fathers and sons, uncles and nephews. A place where fifty thousand men died fighting for a principle. A principle so imbedded in the Declaration of Independence that this war should have never been necessary.




    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
      The premise that all men are created equal was at the very root of the Civil War. An entire group of people were enslaved strictly because of the color of their skin.
      Now here we are 143 years later. I don’t know what Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts were as he prepared to go to war. Did he turn to the Declaration of Independence for guidance? Perhaps it was the following sentence from the Declaration that gave him the courage to fight a Civil War.
    . But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
      A young country, it wasn’t even 100 years old yet, would surely be destroyed by enslaving other men and women. All we would have to do is look back in history to the Roman Empire to see the destruction awaiting us. 

      It is fitting that the Lincoln Memorial is situated in such a way that it looks across the Reflecting Pool to the World War Two Memorial and just beyond that the Washington Monument.
      The starkest of all the Monuments in Washington the Washington Memorial is the pinnacle from which this great country was formed. It looks upon two Memorials that preserved this country, and what it stands for, for future generations.
        Abraham Lincoln stood for freedom, freedom for all men, not just a select group or race.
        The World War Two Memorial stands in honor of the men and women that died fighting for the preservation of another group of people, the Jews.
        Between these monuments is a reflecting pool and that is where we need to focus today, July, 4, 2007.
        We need to reflect and realize that while the muskets and cannons of the Civil War have fallen silent the battle continues today. We still have Cities separated into blacks on one side of the river and whites on the other.
        We even to this day have Churches that are separated by color.
        Anti-Semitism is on the rise again in Germany and other European Countries.
        Will there ever be a time when those words of the Declaration of Independence, penned so eloquently 231 years ago will ring true?   


      Will there ever be a time when a man is defined strictly by his character and not his color or race?
      Will there ever be a time when we will realize that we are all Gods’ children, White, Black, Jewish. 
      Will there ever be a time in America when the dream of our Fore-fathers will be brought to bear and all men are truly equal?