Lincoln’s SPECIAL MESSAGE to Congress (4 July, 1861)

A warning about Democracy, from a wartime president.

Original Post (drawn for Patrons of COMICS CAMP 2022) >>

PRINTABLE PDF >>

FOLDING INSTRUCTIONS:
1-Sheet (8p) Mini-Comic

---

SOURCE TEXT: MillerCenter.org: “July 4, 1861: July 4th Message to Congress” >>

“Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled — the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains — its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.”