Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

In the lane, snow is glistening…

Merry Christmas, fellow patriots! We’re just eight days away from celebrating the birth of Christ, Our Saviour, and I’m listening to Christmas carols in the background. “A beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight… walking in a winter wonderland.” Traditional music of the season getting me in the spirit!

Two nights ago I took the oath to steadfastly care for the people of Cape Canaveral as their representative on our City Council. I was appointed to fill a vacant seat for a year, with the option of retaining the position as a candidate in November 2026. If our fellow voters (active registered voters is 7,500–8,500) determine I’ve earned their vote, I might do it. But that’s months away, and I’m not there with it yet.

Which explains why I’ve been juggling my time between that and a part time job checking in passengers at the boatyard (Port Canaveral) thus haven’t logged daily dozens of posts here. Many thanks to Robert “An Old Piece of Leather” Wallace for adding his voice to the Radiopatriot with his wit and wisdom. Thank you, Robert!

---

Abraham Lincoln’s Speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield (1838)

In 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered this address to the Young Men’s Lyceum, a debating society in Springfield, Illinois, in the wake of growing mob violence, including the 1837 killing of abolitionist printer Elijah Lovejoy by a pro-slavery mob.  

Lincoln was already a practicing lawyer and a Whig representative in the Illinois state legislature.  As a young man, Lincoln had concerns about the rise of Jacksonian politics, with the Founding generation fading away and a new generation rising.  

For Lincoln, this generational change represented a dangerous moment for America—a time when ambitious politicians might be tempted to operate outside of the boundaries of the law to secure their own moment of glory.  

Furthermore, Lincoln feared that the rise of mob violence might threaten the survival of republican government itself.  

Lincoln’s Lyceum Speech remains a stark rebuke to the dangers of mob violence and an enduring defense of the rule of law.

~~~

As a subject for the remarks of the evening, the perpetuation of our political institutions, is selected. . . . We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them—they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors.

Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader . . .

This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?

—At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?

—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.

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.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts . . . .

Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana . . . . Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. . . .

. . . The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple.

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.

As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;

—let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap

—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;

—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. . . .

MORE

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/abraham-lincoln-speech-to-the-young-mens-lyceum-of-springfield-1838