Often quoted out of context as evidence that a race of giants recently lived in North America, is this quote from Lincoln:
It is variously reported as being from a speech he gave, or even something he said before congress. However the actual quote simply comes from some unfinished rambling notes that that Lincoln wrote after visiting Niagara, and the quote about "extinct giants" may simply be about mammoths. Here's the full quote in context
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:6?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
http://tnephilim.blogspot.com/2013/10/abraham-lincolns-quote-about-ancient.html
[bunk]
Abraham Lincoln, is quoted as saying before Congress in 1848
“The eyes of that species of extinct giant, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as our eyes do now.”
[/bunk]
http://bearfabrique.org/History/giants.htm
[bunk]It was common knowledge in the United States in the 1800s that there were burial mounds at numerous sites containing the bones of giant humans, and even Abraham Lincoln mentioned this once in a speech given at Niagara Falls[/bunk]
But did Lincoln actually mean humanoid giants? Arguably so, as Geoffrey Sea discusses:
http://portcitiesreview.com/lincolns-mystery-mound-tour-by-geoffrey-sea/
For example, it occupies pride of place as the epigraph of Richard Dewhurst's book: The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America:The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now
It is variously reported as being from a speech he gave, or even something he said before congress. However the actual quote simply comes from some unfinished rambling notes that that Lincoln wrote after visiting Niagara, and the quote about "extinct giants" may simply be about mammoths. Here's the full quote in context
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:6?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
The note on this from the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln say:
Niagara-Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions and millions, are drawn from all parts of the world, to gaze upon Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just such as any inteligent man knowing the causes, would anticipate, without [seeing] it. If the water moving onward in a great river, reaches a point where there is a perpendicular jog, of a hundred feet in descent, in the bottom of the river,---it is plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain the water, thus plunging, will foam, and roar, and send up a mist, continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rain-bows. The mere physical of Niagara Falls is only this. Yet this is really a very small part of that world's wonder. It's power to excite reflection, and emotion, is it's great charm. The geologist will demonstrate that the plunge, or fall, was once at Lake Ontario, and has worn it's way back to it's present position; he will ascertain how fast it is wearing now, and so get a basis for determining howlong it has been wearing back from Lake Ontario, and finally demonstrate by it that this world is at least fourteen thousand years old. A philosopher of a slightly different turn will say Niagara Falls is only the lip of the basin out of which pours all the surplus water which rains down on two or three hundred thousand square miles of the earth's surface. He will estim[ate with] approximate accuracy, that five hundred thousand [to]ns of water, falls with it's full weight, a distance of a hundred feet each minute---thus exerting a force equal to the lifting of the same weight, through the same space, in the same time. And then the further reflection comes that this vast amount of water, constantly pouring down, is supplied by an equal amount constantly lifted up, by the sun; and still he says, ``If this much is lifted up, for this one space of two or three hundred thousand square miles, an equal amount must be lifted for every other equal space, and he is overwhelmed in the contemplation of the vast power the sun is constantly exerting in quiet, noiseless opperation of lifting water up to be rained down again.
But still there is more. It calls up the indefinite past. When Columbus first sought this continent---when Christ suffered on the cross---when Moses led Israel through the Red-Sea---nay, even, when Adam first came from the hand of his Maker---then as now, Niagara was roaring here. The eyes of that species of extinct giants, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara, as ours do now. Co[n]temporary with the whole race of men, and older than the first man, Niagara is strong, and fresh to-day as ten thousand years ago. The Mammoth and Mastadon---now so long dead, that fragments of their monstrous bones, alone testify, that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara. In that long---long time, never still for a single moment. Never dried, never froze, never slept, never rested,
Example misleading usages:[1] AD, DLC-RTL. The dating of this document by Nicolay and Hay [July 1, 1850?] has been rejected because the editors can find no reason for so dating it. The date, c. September 25-30, 1848, is based on two principal facts: (1) Lincoln visited Niagara Falls en route from Boston to Chicago, September 23-October 5, 1848; (2) the document is in appearance of paper and handwriting contemporary with the documents of speeches written in 1848 in Washington. The content suggests the sort of meditation and recapitulation of observations and reflections which would be psychologically apropos following a visit to the Falls, and one suspects that Lincoln's boat trip from Buffalo provided the leisure to begin, if not to conclude, the meditation. Nicolay and Hay entitle the piece ``Notes for a Lecture,'' but the subject itself should suffice. The manuscript stops abruptly with an unfinished sentence.
http://tnephilim.blogspot.com/2013/10/abraham-lincolns-quote-about-ancient.html
[bunk]
Abraham Lincoln, is quoted as saying before Congress in 1848
“The eyes of that species of extinct giant, whose bones fill the mounds of America, have gazed on Niagara as our eyes do now.”
[/bunk]
http://bearfabrique.org/History/giants.htm
[bunk]It was common knowledge in the United States in the 1800s that there were burial mounds at numerous sites containing the bones of giant humans, and even Abraham Lincoln mentioned this once in a speech given at Niagara Falls[/bunk]
But did Lincoln actually mean humanoid giants? Arguably so, as Geoffrey Sea discusses:
http://portcitiesreview.com/lincolns-mystery-mound-tour-by-geoffrey-sea/
At first when I read this I thought that he was talking about mastodon bones, since he mentions mastodons just a couple sentences later. A similar confusion has attended the writings of Jefferson, who took to the shorthand of describing the mastodon bones he examined as those of “giants,” meaning giant elephants. But mastodon bones do not fill the architectural “mounds of America,” and it would have been weird to describe the giant elephants as gazing with aesthetic appreciation upon Niagara Falls as we do. Lincoln’s mention of mastodons follows as a repetition, making clear that both giant mound-builders and mastodons had looked upon Niagara Falls:
“The Mammoth and Mastadon—now so long dead, that fragments of their monstrous bones, alone testify, that they ever lived, have gazed on Niagara.”
So Lincoln was showing off his naturalist acumen in distinguishing between mammoths and mastodons, and in breaking the story of giant humans, whose bones fill the mounds, and who constituted a separate and extinct species, in Darwinian terms. That would not be such an unusual reference since there were dozens if not hundreds of reports of “giant skeletons” found in the mounds, the result of aforementioned hucksterism, speculation, and ignorance.
However, that wave of “giant” hucksterism is rather precisely dated. It occurred between 1865 and 1920, with a spate of “giant” discoveries in the first decade of the 1900s. Indeed, it’s the time stamp on those reports that marks mound-giantism as an artificial phenomenon, of cultural creation. Going by newspaper reports, which are really the only so-called evidence available, nobody seems to have started discovering mound-builder giants until after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, which may say more about his larger-than-life image than about any ancient bones found in the ground.
In other words, Lincoln himself was the “giant” who made the giant-reporting business lucrative, and the fad did not spread in earnest until after the notorious Cardiff Giant hoax of central New York state in 1869. That episode made Honest Abe’s posthumous role in the duplicitous giant trade rather obvious: George Hull duped workers into fashioning a ten-foot-tall “petrified” man out of gypsum by telling them he was commissioned to make a statue of Lincoln. Both Hull and the infamous P.T. Barnum then collected small fortunes from audiences of the “unearthed petrified giant,” and from a fake copy of the fake, engraving in stone self-abasement as the great American pastime.
Nobody finds giant human bones nowadays, since DNA analysis has been available. Yet in the fertile soil of Ohio and on the Internet, shards of the crackpottery of mound-giants still surface like buried refuse after a rainstorm. Invariably, the same mangled biblical authority is cited that inspired Hull, an atheist, to exploit the gullibility of the godly in New York. “The Nephilim,” were the antediluvian giants mentioned in the Book of Genesis, it is said, and therefore they must have been the supernatural helpers of ancient architects around the world. Problem is that nephilim means “giants” only in Greek and English mistranslation. In Hebrew, the word is of dubious etymology but has no literal reference to height.
