To editor:

Simply stated, Abraham Lincoln did not say: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”

The real Lincoln quote as noted by, Michael Burlingame, a chair in Lincoln studies at the University of Illinois Springfield, told us Lincoln “was denouncing mob violence which would lead to chaos, provoking the public to demand law and order, which would be provided by an ambitious leader who would rule tyrannically.”

I would propose that the incorrect Lincoln quote as stated by a previous letter writer (Destroying America) could lead to the “mob violence… provoking the public to demand law and order which would be provided by an ambitious leader who would rule tyrannically. The reader should decide who the “ambitious leader” is.

Bruce Marvin

Cape Coral