Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the exact same day, FEBRUARY 12, 1809, but their lives had opposite effects.
Lincoln is best known for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and freeing millions of slaves, claiming all men are created equal, as he stated in his Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863:
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Darwin’s theory of evolution claims men were not created, instead they evolved, and men are not equal, as some are more evolved than others.
This influenced Karl Marx who read Darwin’s Origin of Species a year after its publication, then reread it two years later, writing:
“Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural selection for the class struggle in history.”
Darwin influenced Hitler, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung, whose totalitarian regimes killed and enslaved millions.
Lincoln’s last act in office was to put on all National Coin the motto, “In God We Trust.”
Darwin’s theory has been used to deny a Creator God.
Lincoln told his Cabinet, September 22, 1862, as reported Treasury Secretary Salmon Portland Chase:
“The time for the annunciation of the emancipation policy can no longer be delayed. Public sentiment will sustain it, many of my warmest friends and supporters demand it, and I have promised God that I will do it.”
When asked by Secretary Chase to explain, Lincoln replied:
“I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee were driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves.”
Lincoln, the first Republican President, addressed the Indiana Regiment, March 17, 1865:
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
Lincoln wrote to H.L. Pierce, April 6, 1859:
“This is a world of compensation; 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, cannot long retain it.”
Lincoln stated in his Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865, just 41 days before his assassination:
“If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God…He now wills to remove, and that He gives…this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,
shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?…’the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”
Lincoln stated in his Second Annual Message, December 1, 1862:
“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free…We shall nobly save – or meanly lose – the last, best hope of earth…The way is plain…which if followed the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless.”
In contrast, Darwin published his Origin of Species, 1859, and in 1871, his Descent of Man, in which he wrote:
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated…
We civilized men, on the other hand…build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick…
Thus the weak members propagate their kind. No one who had attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man…
Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed…
Civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world…
The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
Social Darwinism served to justify the racism of the Dred Scott v Sanford Decision, 1856, written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who was appointed by Democrat President Jackson:
“Slaves had…been regarded as beings of an inferior order…so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
Darwin’s theory influenced Margaret Sanger, who promoted “eugenics” and “forced sterilization” to eliminate inferior races. Sanger founded a 501(c)3 called Planned Parenthood.
Margaret Sanger, in her book Pivot of Civilization, 1922, called for the:
“Elimination of ‘human weeds’…overrunning the human garden; for the cessation of ‘charity’ because it prolonged the lives of the unfit; for the segregation of ‘morons, misfits, and the maladjusted’; and for the sterilization of genetically inferior races.”
Sanger advised Nazi Party member Ernst Rüdin, father of “racial hygiene,” who educated on the dangers of hereditary defectives – “untermensch,” which led to millions dying in the holocaust.
Joseph Stalin followed in the Soviet Union, exterminating through intentional famines, forced labor and executions an estimated 27 million Ukrainians. Stalin’s notorious 1937 order No. 00447 called for the mass execution and exile of “socially harmful elements” as “enemies of the people.”
Mao Zedong followed this example with his atheistic Communist Party policies causing an estimated 80 million deaths in China.
Lev Navrozov, an immigrant from the U.S.S.R. who has worked with the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, wrote in “Nationalism in the Slave States of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and now, China,” December 23, 2010:
“Once upon a time it was assumed that a slave should fulfill the slave-owners’ order as efficiently as a machine. But after Stalin, Hitler, and Mao…slaves must relive the order, and hence scream in their delight to kill and be killed.”
These not too distant genocides resulting from an unequal value of human life, resemble the unequal value in Islamic teachings: that Jews are from apes, Christians are swine, and Kafir infidel “dhimmi” are worth less than Muslim males – a sharia political system which over 1,400 years contributed to an estimated 180 million enslaved and 270 million deaths.
Lincoln’s views were echoed by other Presidents, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt who stated in United Flag Day broadcast, June 14, 1942:
“The belief in man, created free, in the image of God – is the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies we face.”
Harry S Truman stated in his Inaugural Address, January 20, 1949:
“We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God. From this faith we will not be moved.”
Ronald Reagan stated to the citizens of Hambach, Germany, May 6, 1985:
“Each of us…is made…in the image of God, the image of God the Creator.”
Woodrow Wilson stated in Denver, Colorado, on the 300th anniversary of King James Bible, May 7, 1911:
“The finger of God that moves upon the face of the nations is against every man that plots the nation’s downfall or the people’s deceit…
These men are…groping and staggering in their ignorance to a fearful day of judgment;
and…whether one generation witnesses it or not the glad day…will come in which men will sing by the host of the coming of the Lord in His glory,
and all of those will be forgotten – those little, scheming, contemptible creatures that forgot the image of God and tried to frame men according to the image of the evil one.”
William J. Federer is a nationally known speaker, best-selling author, and president of Amerisearch, Inc., a publishing company dedicated to researching America’s noble heritage.
To learn more about the author please visit William Federer
Featured image: The Garden of Eden, Thomas Cole, c. 1828, oil on canvas (Amon Carter Museum)
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