Bust of Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He led the United States through its Civil War, and in doing so preserved the Union of the United States of America, abolished slavery, and strengthened the federal government. In his Address at the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore Maryland in April of 1861, Lincoln stated: “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names…liberty and tyranny.”