The Young Men’s Lyceum speech of 1838, the first public address that a young Abraham Lincoln ever gave, in the middle of it is this quite remarkable passage where it’s as though he’s almost predicting an impending crisis:
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger and by what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect” — we here is this American nation — “Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic military giant to step over the ocean and crush us at a blow?” He answers, “Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge Mountains, in a trial of 1000 years. If destruction is to be our lot we must ourselves be its author and its finisher. As a nation of free men we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
Source Link: HIST 119 - Lecture 6 - Expansion and Slavery: Legacies of the Mexican War and the Compromise of 1850