Washington's is the mightiest name of earth - long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor leave it shining on.

This passage comes from Abraham Lincoln’s address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, delivered on January 27, 1838. Speaking to a local debating society amid a period of mob violence and “lynch law” incidents in the United States (including the recent killing of abolitionist editor Elijah P. Lovejoy in Illinois), Lincoln urged renewed reverence for law and constitutional government. In that setting he invoked George Washington as the supreme civic exemplar—an almost sacred symbol of the nation’s founding ideals—using Washington’s name to model the kind of civic piety and moral discipline Lincoln believed necessary to preserve republican institutions against lawlessness and faction.

Lincoln treats “Washington” not merely as a historical figure but as a moral touchstone whose reputation functions like a civic religion. The claim that no eulogy can add “brightness” to Washington parallels the sun: Washington’s example is self-evident, requiring reverent acknowledgment rather than rhetorical embellishment. The emphasis on “civil liberty” and “moral reformation” suggests that Washington’s greatness lies both in founding political freedom and in embodying personal restraint and public virtue. Lincoln’s larger aim is didactic: by elevating Washington beyond partisan appropriation, he encourages citizens to cultivate awe, humility, and obedience to law—virtues he presents as essential to the survival of American self-government.