Background
It is June, June 1st, 2020.
It is the beginning of the last month of the first part of the year.
Juneteenth
Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration honoring the end of slavery in the United States.
On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger led thousands of federal troops to Galveston, Texas to announce that the Civil War had ended, and slaves had been freed.
Approximately 250,000 Texan slaves had no idea that their freedom had been secured by the government.
Saving a Union
Abraham Lincoln
- Quotes
- “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy Slavery,” Lincoln wrote. “What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union…”
- I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.”
- If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.
- My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
- What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
- I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
- Slavery
- This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.
- Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
- As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
- In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
- The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.
- Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposite to it, in his love of justice.
- If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
- No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle–the sheet anchor of American republicanism.
- Independence
- All honor to Jefferson–to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.
- Communion with God
- I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.
- Heart
- I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.
- Parenting
- I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.
- All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
- No man is poor who has a Godly mother.”
- Truth
- I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have.
- I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Swear
- 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.
- Feeble-Minded
- I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses while crossing streams’.
- Seeing
- I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement, I have the best of the bargain.
- God & Religion
- It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
- With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
- I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war. I will close by saying, God bless the women of America!
- My concern is not whether God is on our side; My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.
- In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.
- God’s Will
- The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.
- In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.
- Choosing
- 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.
- “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy Slavery,” Lincoln wrote. “What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union…”
- Sources
Songs
Let them Know
Videos
- Band Aid – Do they know it’s christmas 1984 | HD – Widescreen 16:9
Channel:- Christmas Music Videos
Date Published:- 2016-November-23rd
Link
Vocalist Members
Band Aid vocalist members:
- Robert “Kool” Bell (Kool & the Gang)
- Bono (U2)
- Pete Briquette (The Boomtown Rats)
- Adam Clayton (U2)
- Phil Collins (Genesis and solo artist )
- Chris Cross (Ultravox)
- Simon Crowe (The Boomtown Rats)
- Sara Dallin (Bananarama)
- Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama)
- Johnny Fingers (The Boomtown Rats)
- Bob Geldof (The Boomtown Rats)
- Boy George (Culture Club)
- Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17)
- Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet)
- John Keeble (Spandau Ballet)
- Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
- Martin Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
- Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran)
- Marilyn George Michael (Wham!)
- Jon Moss (Culture Club)
- Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet)
- Rick Parfitt (Status Quo)
- Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran)
- Francis Rossi (Status Quo)
- Sting (The Police and solo artist)
- Andy Taylor (Duran Duran)
- James “J.T.” Taylor (Kool & the Gang)
- John Taylor (Duran Duran)
- Roger Taylor (Duran Duran)
- Dennis Thomas (Kool & the Gang)
- Midge Ure (Ultravox)
- Martyn Ware (Heaven 17)
- Jody Watley
- Paul Weller (The Style Council)
- Keren Woodward (Bananarama)
- Paul Young
Wishing Well
I wish you a happy June.
A happy and freeing Juneteenth.
References
- Rolling Stone
- The Making of Band Aid: Secrets and Stories From the Star-Studded Session
- Profile
- Sting, Boy George, Bob Geldof, Midge Ure and more take us behind “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
- Links
- Link #1
Link
- Link #1
- Profile
- The Making of Band Aid: Secrets and Stories From the Star-Studded Session
In Parting
Abraham Lincoln
All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.
No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
The Rev. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
The Awakening of Hope: Why We Practice a Common Faith
My recovery will never be complete until I help heal the society that made me sick
Learning in the Open 