“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.”

—  Abraham Lincoln

Speech in the United States House of Representatives (12 January 1848)
1840s
Context: Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

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Abraham Lincoln photo
Abraham Lincoln 618
16th President of the United States 1809–1865

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