Franklin D. Roosevelt

Remarks on Visiting the Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln.

June 14, 1936

I have visited the cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born. I have come here individually, as one of many millions of Americans whose lives have been influenced for the good by Abraham Lincoln.

I live, temporarily, in the same house and the same rooms once occupied by him. The very window from which he gazed in the dark days is the same.

But this cabin is even more personal than the scenes of his official life, for here was born and lived the child. Here was the promise, later to be so splendidly fulfilled.

I have taken from this cabin a renewed confidence that the spirit of America is not dead, that men and means will be found to explore and conquer the problems of a new time with no less humanity and no less fortitude than his.

Here we can renew our pledge of fidelity to the faith which Lincoln held in the common man—the faith so simply expressed when he said:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Remarks on Visiting the Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/208873

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