“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.  Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.  Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?  Is there any better or equal hope in the world?”

— Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
American statesman
16th President: 1861-65; first Republican president; assassinated following Civil War