Abraham Lincoln's Cincinnati Speech Endorsed Immigration

Abraham Lincoln

On February 12, 1861, Abraham Lincoln told a group of German immigrants in Cincinnati that:

“While man [sic] exists, it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind.”

My simple thesis today is that Lincoln, the Republican Party’s first president, not only supported immigration, but regarded immigrants with goodwill, equality, and compassion.

Lincoln supported immigration in this brief speech in Cincinnati, Ohio. He stated that immigrants equaled everyone else in merit. That Lincoln’s welcoming position aroused controversy in 1861, just as it does today, should surprise no one. In the wry, chatty style at which he excelled, Lincoln assured the crowd that they, as immigrants, equaled everyone else:

“In regard to Germans and foreigners, I esteem foreigners no better than other people, nor any worse. [Laughter and cheers.] They are all of the great family of men, and if there is one shackle upon any of them, it would be far better to lift the load from them than to pile additional loads upon them. [Cheers.]” 

Lincoln continued that the United States had plenty of room to accommodate immigrants:

“And inasmuch as the continent of America is comparatively a new country, and the other countries of the world are old countries, there is more room here, comparatively speaking, than there is there; and if they can better their condition by leaving their old homes, there is nothing in my heart to forbid them coming; and I bid them all God speed. [Cheers.]”

Lincoln’s simple compassion, welcoming the immigrants to “better their condition by leaving their old homes,” represented the Republican Party’s sympathetic attitude.

We must clearly recall that immigrants in 1861 faced discrimination and prejudice just as they do today. As historian Laura Leddy Turner notes, “The German, Irish and Italian immigrants who arrived in America during the 1800s often faced prejudice and mistrust.” The same was true two generations later, when my Ukrainian grandparents and their offspring, including my mother, overcame discrimination in western Pennsylvania. Sadly, the same obstacles afflict Latina/Latino and Haitian immigrants today. Lincoln’s statement of equality did not merely represent political or economic wisdom; it demonstrated the compassion for which he and his political movement were becoming famous.

Trump and Vance Spread Lies about the Haitian Immigrants. But Here Is My Family's Story.

 
Yes, times have changed, but why should our values change? Lincoln had begun his speech, not with policy, but by stating a value: that we all share a duty to “assist in ameliorating” the suffering of others. Can today’s Republican Party emulate the wise attitudes and policies that its first great champion conveyed? As the Hebrew Scriptures assure us, there is nothing new under the sun, and prudent men and women can always learn from the past. When honorable people speak, judicious people listen!

Abraham Lincoln Raised the Flag: A Speech of Principle. A Speech for the Ages

Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address: “The Better Angels of Our Nature” 

I do hope that all my fellow Americans celebrated a wonderful Independence Day yesterday. God bless the United States of America. May we always be free, and may our freedom always be tempered by justice.

by William D. Harpine

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Abraham Lincoln, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ronald Reagan Called for Unity on the Fourth of July

Ronald and Nancy Reagan, 1986

The United States of America stands for liberty, justice and equality for all. That is a values statement: a simple statement, radical in 1776, still radical today. On Independence Day, July 4, 1986, 40 years ago today, standing before the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, President Ronald Reagan praised America’s values. Recalling the signers of the Declaration of Independence, he remarked on “On the proposition that every man, woman, and child had a right to a future of freedom.” He reminded the audience that the Declaration of Independence affirmed that everyone is “endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Those values, he insisted, must guide our nation. 

Thus, Reagan’s stirring speech reminded the United States that we all stand equal, in our diversity, and that immigrants from far and wide came past Liberty’s torch to seek the United States of America, the homeland of liberty:

“Last night, when we rededicated Ms. Liberty and lit her torch, we reflected on all the millions who came here in search of a dream of freedom, inaugurated in Independence Hall. We reflected, too, on their courage and coming great distances and settling in a foreign land, and then passing onto their children and their children's children. The hope symbolized in this statue here just behind us, the hope that is America.”

This led Reagan, brimming with hope, to affirm that neither religion, nor race, nor political affiliation could ever divide us:

“And so tonight we are for reaffirm, that Jew and Gentile, we are one nation under God. That black and white, we are one nation indivisible. That Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans.”

Ceremonial (or epideictic) speeches like this one are about praise and blame. Reagan excelled in ceremonies Praising America, he cited historical values for us to live by, values that can guide our great nation's policies. It is no accident that Reagan spoke with the Statue of Liberty his backdrop. That great statue had welcomed millions of immigrants. The torch signaled the safe harbor of liberty. The setting became part of the message. Reagan expressed a simple theme, a theme that hearkens back to the nation’s origins, to that great day when we proclaimed our independence and dedicated ourselves to values of freedom, equality, and justice. Those values were even more radical in 1776 than they are today. Holding to the vision, Reagan remembered that our nation was built on a foundation of great ideas. Reagan’s wise words should remind us of who we are, while inspiring us to support our American virtues. For, after all, those virtues are eternal. To forsake those values is to forsake our sacred flag.

Happy 250th birthday, United States of America! Let freedom ring!

by William D. Harpine

 
Mark Twain's 1886 Fourth of July Speech

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 Fourth of July Speech

Ronald Reagan Spoke about Freedom, Friendship, and Hope at Moscow State University

_________

S.S. Pretoria, which took my grandfather to Ellis Island

Personal Note: More than a century ago, my maternal grandparents sailed past that same Statue of Liberty and landed at nearby Ellis Island (in an era when the United States welcomed immigrants with open arms), settled in the United States, found work, and raised a family of patriots. My grandmother was only 16 years old, traveling alone, desperately hoping to escape famine and conflict in her native land. They raised an extended family of engineers, nurses, physicians, lawyers, homemakers, professors, and war heroes. My grandmother became a Gold Star mother. Please, America, let us not smash the good things our forebears built. To be a patriot means to honor our values, our heritage, and our honor. May it ever be so. 

Trump and Vance Spread Lies about Immigrants. But Here Is My Family's Story.

Copyright ©2026 by William D. Harpine

Image of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, US government, public domain,

via Wikimedia Commons

Image of SS Pretoria, Detroit Publishing Company, public domain,

via Wikimedia Commons

Trump and Vance Spread Lies about the Haitian Immigrants. But Here Is My Family's Story.

Immigrants at Ellis Island

If you live in the United States, unless you are 100% Native American, you are an immigrant or the descendent of immigrants.

All the Republican talk (and when I say “talk,” I mean “lies”) about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio got me to think about my maternal grandparents. I am thinking about them because their lives were so like those of the Haitian immigrants, and the challenges they faced were so similar. 

Did Trump Reset the Agenda When He Falsely Accused Haitians of Eating Pets?

My grandfather Michael and grandmother Anna left Ukraine in the early 20th Century to escape a terrible potato famine. The Ukrainian economy having long been oppressed by Russian, Austrian, and Polish overlords, the people began to starve when the potato crops failed. The Ukrainian diet consisted of little bits of cheese, wheat pastries stuffed with potatoes, lots of other potatoes, and meat once a year for Easter.  They had small gardens. The Easter meal featured a slice of bologna-like meat. It was not unlike the diet that hundreds of millions of European poor people ate at that time. Opportunities to advance, to gain an education, or even to find productive employment, simply did not exist. A person’s ambition, ability, and dedication were irrelevant.

Desperate, and unable to feed their children, Ukrainians sent many of them to America, the land of

Statue of Liberty

opportunity, where the Statue of Liberty would greet them with the promise of freedom and justice: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

So it was with Michael and Anna. Sixteen years old, Anna stepped off the boat, with minimal paperwork, with few marketable skills, and knowing no English. She made her case to the authorities and walked into the United States. Knowing no Ukrainian, the clerk at Ellis Island misspelled Michael’s last name (doing the best he could) and off to the piers Michael went.

Local charities helped them. They learned that western Pennsylvania’s steel mills were hiring. Michael and Anna each moved there, with nothing to their names. Michael and Anna married. A skilled carpenter, Michael took a mill job. His country fiddling talent made him popular but didn’t really help economically. Anna sold eggs. They never really mastered English (their family and friends could understand their patois just fine). They worshiped at the Ukrainian church. They never had much money until their older children grew up and built them a two-story country home with a huge kitchen, on a lot with generous garden space. Michael made much of the house’s cabinetry.

Michael and Anna raised twelve children. The older children, who were shuffled to the back of the classroom and received little special help, learned English in school and taught it to their brothers and sisters. My mother, one of the younger children, never really learned Ukrainian (she could understand it but not speak it). She was still placed in the back of the classroom, simply as an act of ethnic bigotry. She joined the choir and the debate team. Graduating at the top of her high school class, she was denied the valedictory scholarship, which instead went to a boy. She moved to Washington (like many children of immigrants, seeking work where she could find it) and became an office worker in the Pentagon. Like everyone in my family, she read voraciously.

Others of Michael and Anna’s children included engineers, a nurse, loving homemakers, and two American Army war heroes. My Uncle Peter died in the Ardennes, nineteen years old, fighting against Nazis. Michael and Anna’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, now scattered across the land, include people dedicated to the law, medicine, and many other professions. Yes, at least one of us became a university professor and author.

Michael and Anna’s story is not unique. It is nothing special. It is repeated, literally millions of times, across this great land. It is the same story that the Haitians in Springfield are writing today.

If you want to make America great, that is how it is done. And, trust me, Trump (himself the grandson of immigrants and husband of an immigrant) has no clue. That same cluelessness, of course, explains why Vance specifically and shamelessly admitted that he was lying about the Haitian immigrants:

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” [italics added]

His eager voters do not seem to care that Vance was lying. That is because facts and reality do not create their resentment. No, to understand the hostility toward immigrants, we look only to the dark forces of fear and suspicion.

The moral of this story? Yes, receiving immigrants, people who speak an unfamiliar language, sing their own songs, and worship in their own way, does affect the receiving communities. It always does. It is, nevertheless, the American way. Employed immigrants also strengthen our economy and make the US a stronger nation. As a recent article in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy notes, tax-paying immigrants can have an indirect helpful effect on the nation’s fiscal health.

Emigration is even harder than immigration. People leave their native lands, almost always because they are fleeing a nightmare. Immigrants often face suspicion, hostility, injustice, and anger. My mother, her brothers, sisters, and parents certainly did. Yet, they contributed their own small part to making America great.

And, in contrast, as Trump and Vance give their loathsome speeches, they are not just lying about the Haitian immigrants. They are lying about America.

As I have often said, speakers can make their point by telling a story. This is my family's story.

by William D. Harpine

____________

Earlier Posts About Immigration Speeches:

Romans 13, Jeff Sessions, and the Cultural Heritage of Conservative Immigration Policy

How Did Donald Trump's Story about Police Heroes Help Him Make a Point about Immigration?

Copyright © 2024 by William D. Harpine

Image of Ellis Island: Library of Congress, public domain

Image of Statue of Liberty: National Park Service, public domain