Tag Archive for: Abraham Lincoln

Hatred of Trump Is Rooted In Contempt For Ordinary Voters

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Trump is our proxy. Everything thrown at Trump is thrown at us. If they can destroy Trump, what shot does any of us have?

‘E pluribus Trump’ = “Out of many, Trump”

“Far from the bully, Trump is the champion of those who have been bullied relentlessly and mercilessly by a self-appointed elite who holds them in contempt. In Trump, they have found a modern George Bailey….”

Opposition To Trump Is Rooted In Contempt For Ordinary Voters

By: Louis Markos, The Federalist, April 22, 2024

In Trump, his supporters hear a spirited defense of the hard-working despised and a fearless denouncing of the fashionable despisers.

A complaint I hear increasingly leveled at contemporary American politicians is that they are out of touch with voters, if not downright contemptuous of them. On a number of core issues, politicians seem less concerned with pursuing policies that are deeply unpopular with ordinary Americans than with upholding the ideologies and self-interests of the ruling elite. Two dramatic examples of this political disconnect with average citizens are the refusal of urban governments to prosecute violent criminals, which has caused a surge in crime, and the White House’s tolerance of mass immigration, which threatens jobs, security, and the rule of law.

As I survey the current political and intellectual landscape, I cannot help but see a resurgence of the arrogance and disdain of the 18th-century French revolutionaries for those they considered to be incapable of rational thought and moral behavior. But I am moving too fast. Let me slow down and give some historical background.

In The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004), Gertrude Himmelfarb distinguishes, convincingly, between the French philosophes, who championed reason; the American Founding Fathers, who concentrated on liberty; and the British moral philosophers, who emphasized human nature, benevolence, and our shared, internal moral sense.

While the English reformers showed compassion for the poor and uneducated and treated them as members of the same human race, and the American framers sought to ensure freedom for all classes, most of the French intellectuals looked down on the peasants, dismissing them as bestial and irrational, filled to the brim with the prejudices and superstitions of the Catholic Church. To the philosophes, the common people were neither honorable nor moral, but ignorant and unteachable, enthralled by religion and profoundly non-progressive. They were not citizens but the rabble. Even Rousseau, who extended some sympathy to the masses of the countryside, felt they needed to be guided by those who were enlightened to adopt the “general will.”

“In his article on the Encyclopédie,” Himmelfarb writes, “Diderot made it clear that the common people had no part in the ‘philosophical age’ celebrated in this enterprise. ‘The general mass of men are not so made that they can either promote or understand this forward march of the human spirit.’ In another article, ‘Multitude,’ he was more dismissive, indeed contemptuous, of the masses. ‘Distrust the judgment of the multitude in matters of reasoning and philosophy; its voice is that of wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice. … The multitude is ignorant and stupefied. … Distrust it in matters of morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions … heroism is practically folly in its eyes.’”

As a citizen in a representative democracy, I expect our political leaders, including Donald Trump, to be held up to public scrutiny and questioned, even investigated, when the facts warrant it. What I do not expect, and find increasingly troubling, is the widespread and ongoing demonization and character assassination of all those who support Trump and approve of his candidacy and his policies.

I am old enough to remember how roughly the political establishment treated supporters of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, especially if they identified with a conservative branch of Christianity. Reagan and Bush supporters routinely had their concerns ridiculed, motives suspected, and intelligence doubted. Still, the dismissal of Reaganites and Bushies as boobs and rednecks pales in comparison to the viciously sanctimonious profiling of Trump supporters as authoritarian, narcissistic white supremacists utterly unconcerned for the common good.

Whereas the liberal progressives of the 1980s expressed some compassion for the needs and struggles of the working man, the woke philosophes of today express only contempt for those who work with their hands. While carrying on the oppressor/oppressed identity politics of Karl Marx and his heirs, they have reduced America’s blue-collar proletariat to a racist, sexist, transphobic rabble who must be suppressed, managed, and reeducated.

Convinced, as the philosophes were, of the “wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice” of the rabble, today’s progressive philosophical, political, and social engineers have appointed themselves the task of redefining for the masses what it ought to mean “to be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father, a child, and when it is suitable to live or to die.”

The ironic difference between the philosophes of the past and the progressives of the present is that the latter have jettisoned reason altogether in their anti-scientific embrace of transgenderism and other uprootings of natural law. The superiority they claim over the masses is not, like that of Diderot, based on their more refined power of reason. On the contrary, their claims of superiority rest on the dubious ground of rejecting truth, logic, and reason as the product of white, patriarchal, heterosexual, and cisgender minds.

No wonder the majority of working men and women in America look to Trump as their advocate. He not only defends their traditional family values, common sense, and God-given humanity. His seems to be the only voice in Washington speaking up for, or even understanding, the joys and woes, hopes and fears, victories and struggles of that “rabble” that the political establishment, on both the left and right, seems only to dismiss, disparage, and despise.

Read the whole thing here.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Mob Goes After Abraham Lincoln

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Abraham Lincoln’s statues dot the landscape for a reason that is well-understood: He is a symbol of wisdom, decency, sacrifice, and perseverance in defeating slavery and liberating millions of black Americans.

Antifa rioters knocked down his statue in Portland during a self-proclaimed “Day of Rage” on the eve of Columbus Day.

They also trashed the Oregon Historical Society, which preserves treasures of the past so that people of succeeding generations may understand their culture and history.

Citizen journalist Andy Ngo quoted one rioter as the mob pulled down a statue of Theodore Roosevelt: “F— all you colonizers! … Everyone of you that’s against Black Lives Matter can f— the f— off.”

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn more now >>

Such ugly and hateful scenes continue, month after month. Local officials continue to enjoy fame, power, and money without having to meet their most basic responsibility of protecting the public.

The Portland public seems indifferent to this, and even the federal government—which in the past has enforced Americans’ civil rights when local authorities refused to do so—seems like a flabby and impotent giant.

When Antifa and its radical associate Black Lives Matter began their campaign of hatred and violence months ago, the news media helped sell the movement as “mostly peaceful” and devoted to ending endemic racism in law enforcement, an object virtually all Americans could support.

But, of course, it soon became clear the movement was divorced from peace and reason. The details of altercations between police and the public that might tend to exonerate officers, or at least put their actions in context, were not promulgated. The movement advanced violence, rather than the peaceful means we have, under our rule of law, of holding police accountable.

Burning black businesses and killing black Americans, as anyone with an ounce of common sense could discern, did nothing to advance the professed cause. The movement promoted defunding the police, a means of subjecting citizens to the violence and terror of the mob.

Many good and caring people have marched for racial justice. But the movement—at its core—was not about holding police accountable.

It was about tearing down America, its freedoms, and the foundational rule of law that protects people’s civil rights. It was about assaulting America’s founding and the statues that honor those who created and sustained this country. A country that, as Lincoln put it, is the last, best hope of mankind.

George Orwell wrote about this approach in his brilliant and chilling analysis of totalitarianism, the novel “1984”:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

President Donald Trump tweeted on Monday morning, “The FBI and Law Enforcement must focus their energy on ANTIFA and the Radical Left, those who have spent the summer trying to burn down poorly run Democrat Cities throughout the USA!”

But he has mouthed such words for months, and the violence and destruction proceed apace, no doubt fueling outrage in many voters.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about this year of COVID-19 and rioting is the way the Constitution and the rule of law have been laid aside, at the encouragement of many politicians and with the willing acceptance of the public.

What’s the best way for America to reopen and return to business? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, assembled America’s top thinkers to figure that out. So far, it has made more than 260 recommendations. Learn more here.

Lincoln, a lifelong advocate of the rule of law, waged a gruesome war to preserve this nation. It makes a powerful symbolic statement of our country’s demise when his statue is facedown in the mud—and no one pays any consequences for such violent destruction.

Originally published by RealClearPublicAffairs

COMMENTARY BY

Edward Achorn

Edward Achorn, an award-winning journalist, is the author of the new book “Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.” Twitter: .

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Democratic Socialists say, “America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark.” And millions of young people believe them…

For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their hands.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are “proof” that socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to explain why.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time, they’re offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.

Get your free copy of “Why Democratic Socialists Can’t Legitimately Claim Sweden and Denmark as Success Stories” today and equip yourself with the facts you need to debunk these myths once and for all.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How the Democrats used Mail-in Ballots to try to steal the 1864 Election from Abraham Lincoln and now the 2020 Election from Donald J. Trump

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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

The First Great Election Conspiracy

They say that history has a strange habit of repeating itself. So do politicians.

The Democrats have pushed the idea that mail-in ballots are the best solution for voters. This is not a new idea, but rather just another attempt to steal an election. The first attempt to use mail-in ballots occurred during the 1864 election.

In a eye opening column in The Washington Post titled Mail-in ballots were part of a plot to deny Lincoln reelection in 1864 Dustin Waters wrote:

Traveling to Baltimore in the fall of 1864, Orville Wood had no way of knowing he would soon uncover the most elaborate election conspiracy in America’s brief history.

Wood was a merchant from Clinton County in the most northeastern corner of New York. As a supporter of President Abraham Lincoln, he was tasked with visiting troops from his hometown to “look after the local ticket.”

New York legislators had only established the state’s mail-in voting system in April with the intent of ensuring the suffrage of White troops battling the Confederate Army.

This great “election conspiracy was conducted by the Democratic Party, known as the Copperheads. The Copperheads were:

[T]he Northern wing of the Democratic Party, which opposed the Civil War. These Peace Democrats urged an immediate, peaceful settlement with the Confederacy. Many supported slavery and blamed the war on abolitionists. They argued that Southern states had the right to secede and that the federal government’s policies under President Abraham Lincoln violated the Constitution. Republican writers labeled these Democrats Copperheads to suggest that they were poisonous snakes, betraying and endangering the Union. The Democrats accepted the label, reframing it as a reference to the image of Liberty on a copper penny. In some cases, members of the group were arrested for treason, tried, and imprisoned or sent into the Confederate states.

The Copperhead Catechism refers to Fernando Wood who was New York City’s mayor, and later, a congressman. Wood was an avowed Copperhead who, in 1861, had urged the city to secede in order to maintain revenues from the cotton trade.

Read more.

Dustin Waters noted:

The results of the 1864 elections would heavily affect the outcome of the war. Lincoln and his supporters in the National Union Party sought to continue the war and defeat the Confederacy outright. Meanwhile antiwar Democrats, also referred to as Copperheads, looked for an immediate compromise with the Confederate leaders and the end of the abolition movement.

Read more.

The Second Great Election Conspiracy

Fast forward to the 2020 Presidential Election. Like their predecessors The Copperheads the Democrats have rekindled the the old, and proven fraudulent, use of mail-in ballots. Their excuse? COVID-19. The Democrats have made this pandemic and the USPS an issue to blackmail states and force them to pass legislation allowing mail-in ballots.

In a Daily Signal column titled Potential for Fraud Is Why Mail-In Elections Should Be Dead Letter Hans von Spakovsky wrote:

Absentee ballots are the tools of choice of election fraudsters because they are voted outside the supervision of election officials, making it easier to steal, forge, or alter them, as well as to intimidate voters.

Going entirely to by-mail elections would unwisely endanger the security and integrity of the election process, particularly if officials automatically mail absentee ballots to all registered voters without a signed, authenticated request from each voter.

Voter registration rolls are notoriously inaccurate and out of date, containing the names of voters who are deceased, have moved, or otherwise have become ineligible.

Mail-in Ballot Election Fraud in New Jersey

A real example of the use of mail-in ballots and rampant voter fraud occurred in New Jersey. A Wall Street Journal editorial titled A Mail-Voting Redo in New Jersey noted:

New Jersey’s judiciary is calling an electoral mulligan. The state’s third-biggest city, Paterson, held a municipal election by mail in May, but the results fell into doubt after a startling percentage of the ballots were tossed out. Four men, including a city councilman and a councilman-elect, were charged with vote fraud.

On Wednesday a state court found that the election in the city’s third ward “was rife with mail in vote procedural violations,” and therefore it “was not the fair, free and full expression of the intent of the voters.” A redo will be held Nov. 3. “Of all ballots cast in the Third Ward City Council election,” Judge Ernest Caposela wrote, “24.29% were rejected.” By comparison, he said that in 31 municipal elections held the same day across New Jersey, the overall ballot-rejection rate was “only 9.6%.” For democratic legitimacy, that’s an alarming “only.”

Read more.

Conclusion

Today’s Copperheads are Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the DNC. They have all been named in Democrat Party emails as supporters of mail-in ballots.

The Democrats are bent on stealing and winning the 2020 Presidential Election, come hell or mail-in ballots.

Saving America is based upon free and fair elections. Mail-in ballots have a proven history of fraud, waste and abuse of our election systems

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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America Was Less Divided During the Civil War Than It Is Today

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My latest in PJ Media:

There is growing worry these days about whether or not we are headed for another civil war, and whether the divisions in American society are as bad as they were in the run-up to what is still the bloodiest war in American history. In fact, there is no comparison between the divisions between Americans today and in the run-up to the Civil War. The ones today are far worse. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we are headed for a shooting war, but we certainly may be.

A civil war is by definition a war between citizens of the same country, and the American Civil War was certainly that. Both sides revered Washington, Jefferson, and the other Founding Fathers. Confederate spokesmen often termed the war their own war for independence, insisting that it was a new iteration of the same desire for self-determination that had led to the American war of independence against Britain.

Both sides respected the United States Constitution to the extent that the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was essentially a copy of that of the nation the Confederates were leaving, with a few minor modifications. It protected the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, and the freedom of religion; it allowed for “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” it protected citizens from unreasonable search and seizure, and contained numerous other provisions taken from the earlier Constitution….

No less an authority than Abraham Lincoln noted the similarity of the two sides in his second inaugural address, even as he pointed out the one thing that sharply distinguished them: “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. 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.”…

Rating America’s Presidents shows how Abraham Lincoln’s unique and incisive articulation about what exactly was wrong about slavery, something that was not at all as clear to many of his contemporaries as it is to today’s woke mob, helped break the logjam that had existed in American politics for the previous half-century. It still took a long and bloody civil war to lead to national reconciliation and the binding up of the nation’s wounds….

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

“We All Declare for Liberty, But We Do Not All Mean the Same Thing” by Eugene Volokh

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A comment on my freedom and hypocrisy post reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, from Abraham Lincoln, in his Address at a Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Apr. 18, 1864:

The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.

I’ve long found this to be a thought-provoking piece, and a useful reminder that “liberty” in the abstract is not self-defining. Most rhetoric that simply refers to “liberty” — whether in the context of slavery, where Lincoln said this, or abortion rights, or national sovereignty, and so on — rests on the assertion about the proper definition of people’s or institutions’ rights; and it’s that definition that should often be at the heart of the debate.

Of course, this analysis doesn’t itself tell us what the proper result is in any debate (such as the debate about abortion). But it should remind us that many questions can’t be resolved by just talking about “liberty” in the abstract, or “not imposing one’s beliefs on others” in the abstract.

If liberty means freedom to do things that don’t violate the rights of others, the important questions are (1) what constitutes those “rights,” (2) what counts as violation, and (3) in some contexts (e.g., abortion, animal rights, slavery), who counts as “others.”

This post first appeared at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Eugene VolokhEugene Volokh

Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law, at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.

If this flag offends you, you need a lesson in history

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During America’s first but not last civil war, over 620,000 Americans from both sides died.  Today in 2015 liberals and non-Americans are condemning the Confederate flag being flown throughout the south.  Anyone who shows any support or sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of Confederate soldiers who were killed or injured, are labeled haters, racists, and bigots.

This act of ignorance of facts and history should be familiar to Americans who denounce Islam (and rightly so).  Americans who respect the history of America should not be labeled.  Branding and labeling is expected from Islamic terrorists and their supporters (such as CAIR and Obama), but not from educated conservatives.  Yes, even some conservatives have jumped on this political bandwagon.

The American civil war did not start based on the issue of slavery.  Only the wealthy were able to own slaves and very few people from the South (Confederacy) had anything to do with slavery.  Of course slavery is wrong, but it has been a part of world history from the very beginning.  The history of slavery needs to be taught in America, but the facts about this issue should be accurate.

Some historical facts about the American Civil War:

  1. Again slavery was not the primary focus of dispute between the Union (North) and the Confederacy (South).  The Union wanted to expand the power of the federal government and the people of the South did not want this.  They felt the federal government was already too big and powerful.  Does this sound familiar even today?
  2. Slavery had been around for thousands of years before it appeared in America.  Black and white people had been slaves and also slave owners.
  3. The majority of black slaves were captured and sold into slavery by black owners for economic profit.
  4. Islam has always advocated slavery and continues to this day to authorize Muslims to own slaves.
  5. During the American Civil War wealthy people from both the north and south owned slaves.
  6. President Abe Lincoln was the first U.S. President elected from the Republican Party.  Therefore the Republican Party was responsible for the abolition of slavery and not the Democratic Party.
  7. Slavery continues to thrive around the world and even today in America.  Liberal women continue to support a religion (Islam) that promotes slavery and always has.
  8. President Obama is a powerful and influential supporter of Islam and therefore supports the worldwide institution of slavery.

For many Americans we had past relatives from both the North and South. There were brothers fighting brothers and fathers fighting sons.  Innocent children from both sides died as the result of the war being fought in their states and towns. The American Civil War was a result of power and ignorance by politicians from both sides of the aisle.  The Confederate flag does not promote slavery, it promotes the will of people who do not want to live under the thumb of big government.

Two weeks ago in my town of Roanoke, Virginia, several thousand people in cars, trucks, and motorcycles drove through several towns covering hundreds of miles.  Each had a Confederate flag flying from their vehicle.  They were received by the populace with clapping and praise for their effort to let the federal government know there are people who had relatives killed in the civil war, slavery was not the primary issue during the war, and there are millions of Americans from both the north and south today who will fight to prevent politicians from destroying America.

I encourage all Americans to fly both the Union and Confederate flags.  Do not allow a few liberals who support the institution of Islam and Islamic slavery to label you as racists and haters.

Just as I mourn my past relatives from both the north and south who died in the civil war, I support another unpopular movement in America. I support advocating to our children that all lives matter and not just black lives.  We have seen the ranting’s and ravings of black and white racists who promote the idea that it is fine to say “Black Lives Matter”, but will fight and are willing to kill if a white person were to say “White Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter”.

‘Risking Life and Limb for Liberty’ Real Heroes: Harriet Tubman

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When the day arrives that a woman’s image adorns Federal Reserve currency for the first time, it might well be that of Harriet Tubman. She’s reportedly on the short list. It may, however, be a dubious honor to appear on something that declines so regularly in value. Without a doubt, this woman would impart more esteem to the bill than the bill would to her. Her value is far more solid and enduring.

Slavery was once ubiquitous in the world — and even intellectually respectable. That began to change in the late 18th century, first in Britain, which ended its slave trade in 1807 and liberated the enslaved throughout its jurisdiction in 1834. Before the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in America in 1865, American blacks risked everything attempting to escape from their masters, who sometimes pursued them all the way to the Canadian border. Tubman, herself a fugitive slave, became the most renowned “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, a network of trails for escapees from the antebellum South to the North. As many as 100,000 slaves risked life and limb traveling its routes. It was the most dangerous “railroad” in the world.

Born Araminta Harriet Ross in 1820 in Maryland, Tubman survived the brutalities of bondage for 29 years. Three of her sisters had been sold to distant plantation owners. She herself carried scars for her entire life from frequent whippings. Once, when she refused to restrain a runaway slave, she was bashed in the head with a two-pound weight, causing lifelong pain, migraines, and “buzzing” in her ears. She bolted for freedom in 1849, making her way to the neighboring free state of Pennsylvania and its city of brotherly love, Philadelphia.

“I had crossed the line of which I had so long been dreaming,” she later wrote.

I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in the old cabin quarter, with the old folks and my brothers and sisters. But to this solemn resolution I came: I was free, and they should be free also; I would make a home for them in the North, and the Lord helping me, I would bring them all there. Oh, how I prayed then, lying all alone on the cold damp ground! ‘Oh, dear Lord’, I said. I haven’t got no friend but you. Come to my help Lord, for I’m in trouble! Oh, Lord! You’ve been with me in six troubles, don’t desert me in the seventh!

Tubman bravely ventured 13 times back into slave states to personally escort at least 70 escapees to Northern states and to Canada. “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” she famously recounted, “and I can say what most conductors can’t say: I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.” Those passengers included her aging parents, her three brothers, their wives, and many of their children.

Working for the Union Army as a cook and nurse during the Civil War, Tubman morphed quickly into an armed scout and spy. She became the war’s first woman to lead an armed expedition when she guided the Combahee River Raid, an expedition that liberated more than 700 slaves in South Carolina.

For her service to the government — tending to newly freed slaves, scouting into enemy territory, and nursing wounded soldiers — she was treated shamefully and shabbily. She was denied compensation and didn’t receive a pension for her war duties until 1899. She took in boarders and worked long hours at odd jobs to make ends meet.

In an August 1868 letter to Tubman, famous abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass paid tribute to her heroism:

Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day — you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt “God bless you” has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.

Tubman spent her last decades caring for others, especially the sick and aged. She often spoke publicly on behalf of women’s right to vote. For relief from that head injury mentioned earlier, she endured brain surgery in Boston in the late 1890s. She refused anesthesia, preferring instead simply to bite down on a bullet. In her words, the surgeon “sawed open my skull, and raised it up, and now it feels more comfortable.” She died in 1913 at the age of 91 — a real hero to the very end.

In 2014, an asteroid was named for Tubman. In my book, that beats a Federal Reserve note hands down.

For additional information, see:

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.

EDITORS NOTE: Each week, Mr. Reed will relate the stories of people whose choices and actions make them heroes. See the table of contents for previous installments.