Hello again, RadRef folks.
I'm back with another quotation I wish you could check out for me. Much of the early leg work and research has been done on this one and you can find that here at a Georgist website called Wealth and Want. Here's the passage, allegedly from a letter Lincoln wrote to a Mr. Gridley, of the firm of Davis, Lincoln and Gridley, Attorneys, Bloomington, IL. and quoted in this book, which can be found on Google:
Abraham Lincoln and the Men of His Time
Robert Henry Browne, M.D., 1901
"The land, the earth that God gave to man for his home, his sustenance, and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society, or unfriendly Government, any more than the air or the water, if as much. An individual company or enterprise requiring land should hold no more in their own right than is needed for their home and sustenance, and never more than they have in actual use in the prudent management of their legitimate business, and this much should not be permitted when it creates an exclusive monopoly. All that is not so used should be held for the free use of every family to make homesteads, and to hold them as long as they are so occupied.
"A reform like this will be worked out some time in the future. The idle talk of foolish men, that is so common now, on 'Abolitionists, agitators, and disturbers of the peace,' will find its way against it, with whatever force it may possess, and as strongly promoted and carried on as it can be by land monopolists, grasping landlords, and the titled and untitled senseless enemies of mankind everywhere."
http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Browne_Lincoln_Men.htm
A Mr. Asahel Gridley, a lawyer himself and perhaps the same Gridley in Lincoln's firm, did exist and Lincoln even represented him in some legal matters. See this this article:
Lawyers' impact widely felt for 175 years
Also found here in a slightly different context with some references to "land sharks". Scroll down for Lincoln:
I respect the man who properly named these villains land sharks. They are like the wretched ghouls who follow a ship and fatten on its offal.
The land, the earth, God gave to man for his home, sustenance and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society or unfriendly government, any more than the air or water -- if as much. An individual or company, or enterprise, acquiring land should hold no more than is required for their home and sustenance, and never more than they have in actual use in the prudent management of their legitimate business, and this much should not be permitted when it creates an exclusive monopoly. All that is not so used should be held for the free use of every family to make homesteads and to hold them so long as they are so occupied.
The idle talk of foolish men, that is so common now, will find its way against it, with whatever force it may possess, and as strongly promoted and carried on as it can be by land monopolists, grasping landlords and the titled and untitled senseless enemies of mankind everywhere.
On the other questions there is ample room for reform when the time comes; but now it would be folly to think we could take more than we have in hand. But when slavery is over and settled, men should never rest content while oppression, wrongs and iniquities are enforced against them.
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/land-question_i-l.html
Thanks,
LD
Abraham Lincoln quote from about 1856
This quote does not appear to be in the Library of Congress’ "American Memory" site Abraham Lincoln Papers, either by browsing the lists of correspondence, or even trying just one or 2 keywords at a time, such as: Gridley (22 hits), christ (53 hits), or both words: land earth (48 hits) in the Keyword search.
The Brown book that Google provides in free pdf does not appear to include cited references. I will dig some more into federal and state (Illinois, for certain) Lincoln sites, and also try JSTOR, Project Muse, and a few 19th century news sites.
I have claimed this one, but other Rad Ref librarians PLEASE feel free to jump on it too. Quotations are often some of the toughest things to prove or disprove.
Abraham Lincoln quote from about 1856
The two variations of this quote seem to have essentially the same text, but with some rearrangement of paragraphs.
I have seen it cited as a written letter from Lincoln to Gridley. The Robert Henry Browne rendition is that it was a conversation between Lincoln and Gridley. I am skeptical of Browne's version.
Browne's version was published 55 years after the alleged conversation, with no citation of sources. The general tone of the book, including that passage, is more along the lines of storytelling than history, and of homage rather than biography. The version Browne presents is one of a personal conversation in the back-room of Gridley's bank. That alone is suspicious, for the conversation is long and full of speechifying, in the context of Gridley offering Lincoln a land deal that is in the nature of a very private transaction. Even if such an elaborate conversation had taken place, it seems unlikely that a reporter with stenographic skills would have been there to record it. It also seems unlikely to to have been a warranted statement for Lincoln to make in private to someone who had known him for fifteen years, for opposing land monopoly and favoring homesteading had been part of the Republican Party's platform from its inception, and of the Free Soil Party's platform before that. Also, Lincoln's personal reputation had been built around defending homesteaders from "land sharks," i.e., people who filed false claims in order that the actual homesteaders would pay them to abandon those claims.
I don't see Browne making up this conversation out of whole cloth as much as embellishing it with a story line and stitching quotes together to fit that line. The idea of Lincoln writing this in a letter seems far more plausible to me, especially if the letter was intended to serve as a document that Gridley could show others for more public purposes. In other words, it is far more likely that Lincoln authored these words than it is that he did so in the manner Browne describes.
If it is in a letter, that letter should be findable. I don't see people throwing away letter from Abraham Lincoln after he became an icon. Unfortunately Georgist land tax supporters (of which I am one) have had an unfortunate habit of passing quotations around without citations of the original sources. I will have to go digging for the earliest copies of that quote I can find, and see if it has a citation. Usually the first person to use a quote cites the source, and the later versions treat the quote as "common knowledge."