Comments on: Abraham Lincoln’s Greatest Paragraphs http://www.alplm.org/blog/2011/10/abraham-lincoln-greatest-paragraphs/ Wed, 08 May 2013 04:40:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5 By: Brad Watson, Miami http://www.alplm.org/blog/2011/10/abraham-lincoln-greatest-paragraphs/comment-page-1/#comment-2980 Brad Watson, Miami Fri, 18 Nov 2011 22:11:22 +0000 http://www.alplm.org/blog/?p=946#comment-2980 Why did “Father Abraham’ use “Four score and seven years ago”? Lincon said, “87 years ago” in a speech he gave at the White House on 7/4/1863. This was the day after the three day Battle of Gettysburg and the day that Vicksburg surrendered after its 47-day seige. As the president prepared his speech for the National Cemetary Dedication, he realized he could express 87 as “4 score & 7″. Why was it so much better? Well, it was now biblical and had implications of predestination!

Lincoln was affectionately known in the North as ‘Father Abraham’. As a master politician, he welcomed this connection to the Abraham of Genesis. It is in Gen 16:16 of the King James Version that the term “score” for 20 years is first used. “Abram is four score and six years old when he ‘entered’ the slave girl Hagar and impregnated her.” Besides, the slave connectionn, Lincoln was the 16th p16resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Av.

“4 score & 7 years ago” referred to the 4th of the 7th month in 1776. It was 7 years & 4 months later when George Washington and his 74 generals would win the Revolutionary War. Is this all ‘very coincidental’? Or is it a proof of GOD=7_4 and predestination?!

- Brad Watson, Miami

]]> By: William http://www.alplm.org/blog/2011/10/abraham-lincoln-greatest-paragraphs/comment-page-1/#comment-2950 William Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:46:54 +0000 http://www.alplm.org/blog/?p=946#comment-2950 Hands down my favorite paragraph is the following (and every single time I read it, i feel a shiver run down my spine):

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.”

1860 Cooper Union Address

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