Last Best Hope

“The last best hope of earth” is a famous quotation. It says a lot about the world’s expectations of the United States. Believe it or not, this quote was made during one of the bleakest periods of our existence as a country by non other than President Abraham Lincoln. Some say it is nothing but pure arrogance. Others say it is pride. Read the article below to see what Robert Freer calls it and why our history has proven time and time again why this quotation really does define our great American saga thus far in our history.

By Robert E. Freer, Jr., President of The Free Enterprise Foundation

Writing to Congress near the end of 1862 in the depths of a bitter national struggle with the outcome seriously in doubt, Abraham Lincoln called the country to its rendezvous with destiny:

“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility. 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.” In starkly setting the stakes, in calling for the best in us all, Lincoln concisely stated what has from our founding made us different from the rest of the nations of the world. From the arrival of the first European settler, this new world accepted for itself, rising from the aspiration of its people the responsibility to always seek for the best that was in us, not just for ourselves but for the many nations from which we sprang.

Call it arrogant, call it prideful. I call it magnificent! Our best leaders have always been attuned to that spirit universal to the American saga. Our frontier pioneers did not feel they were merely felling trees. They knew to a certainty that they were felling the shackles of outdated notions regarding their relationship to the nation which they, with their sweat and their individual initiative, were creating.

They were showing the world a better way to live. In seeking freedom for the individual human spirit, they were seeking to provide the model for nation states everywhere. The citizen is possessed of the ultimate power, not the state. The citizen is primarily responsible for his or her welfare and cedes only so much power to the state as agreed in a free and fair process.

From the Virginia House of Burgesses and John Winthrop’s City on a Hill to Ronald Reagan’s now burnished city, aglow with the triumph of our example to a shining luster, our citizens have exercised their right to manage themselves, and the nation has accepted its responsibility to lead the world to a better future.

While in some quarters that fact is greeted derisively, it also cannot be denied that as a nation we have tried to be that “… Last Best Hope of Earth”, to which Lincoln, in the depths of our national agony, called us.

As a nation we have often demonstrated that when called, we will be our brother’s keeper. We have met the competing “isms” of the 19th and 20th century and triumphed. We have armed the democracies in war and rebuilt the world in peace. We have given generously of our treasury in time of famine and catastrophe abroad. While individuals may have fallen short from time to time, as a nation we have lived Lincoln’s creed and for that we should be proud.

If you read or listen to the mainstream media and believe the angst they peddle, you would believe as a people we are divided. We are not. Though we are again in a time of national challenge, deep to our core we resonate Lincoln’s summons. From Carolina’s Diamond Gate to California’s Golden Gate, we have harkened to freedom’s call for too many generations to turn aside now. Americans of the 21st century like our ancestors of yore will prove equal to the task. While there is seldom a straight line in any human endeavor, in our current struggle against messianic terrorism, we will endure; we will succeed because we must.

Copyright © 2007 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.

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