A quote falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln saying that America will be destroyed from within and not from without, spreads online. Several Lincoln scholars have confirmed to Reuters that this quote was fabricated. However, this is similar to a remark he made during a speech in 1838.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we have destroyed ourselves – Abraham Lincoln, ”says the quote, which has been shared more than 4,000 times (here, here, here, here).
The quote is usually wrongly attributed to Lincoln: at least three U.S. senators attributed it to Lincoln during the Senate talks and it was therefore recorded under the Congress record, as seen here, here and here. Former President Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, also quoted during the 2020 Republican National Convention (here, here, here ).
Christian McWhirter, Lincoln Historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM) (here, here); Michael Burlingame, holder of Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield here); and Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer, co-chair of The Lincoln Forum, and former chair of The Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and the American Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission (www.haroldholzer.com/), confirmed by email to Reuters that the quote was a distortion is from Lincoln’s Lyceum speech on January 27, 1838, at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois (seen here and here).
In the Lyceum speech, Lincoln said: ‘At what point, then, is the approach to danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must arise among us. It can not come from abroad. If destruction is our part, we must be the author and finisher of it ourselves. As a nation of freemen, we must go through all times or die by suicide. ‘
McWhirter told Reuters that Lincoln’s main issue in this speech, widely regarded as Lincoln’s first major speech, was’ The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions’: ‘By that he meant he was concerned about a recent increase in outlaws, mob violence in America. […] Lincoln believed America’s young democratic institutions were fragile […] and advised his audience that their political concerns can only be properly addressed by law. Although mob action may seem beneficial, it ultimately damages the rule of law, and with it the Constitution, and with it democracy. The reference to national “suicide”.
A search for the exact quote shared on social media showed no results in an online version of the book “Abraham Lincoln’s Speeches of 1891”. Complete ”(here). The quote is also not in the National Archives database, which contains thousands of reports from the founding members here.
The quote was dropped by other fact-checking organizations, including Snopes in June 2019 here, PolitiFact in July 2019 here, Lead Stories in October 2019 here and AFP in June 2020 here.
VERDICT
Partly false. Lincoln experts Christian McWhirter, Michael Burlingame and Harold Holzer told Reuters that Lincoln did not say these exact words, but rather a distortion of his Lyceum address in 1838.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.