The American Minute: Carl Sandburg – ‘When A Nation Goes Down…They Forgot Where They Came From’

“I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair…I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God” -wrote poet Carl Sandburg, who died JULY 22, 1967.A son of Swedish immigrants who worked on the railroad, Sandburg left school after 8th grade, borrowed his father’s railroad pass and traveled as a hobo.

Sandburg volunteered for military service, was sent to Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, and then attended college on a veteran’s bill.

Carl Sandburg wrote children’s fairytales, called Rootabaga Stories, and mused of his wanderings in American Songbag.

Carl Sandburg wrote:

“A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”

Get the book, American Minute – Notable Events of American Significance Remembered on the Date They Occurred

In 1926, Carl Sandburg wrote Abraham Lincoln-The Prairie Years, and in 1939 he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The War Years, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1959, Sandburg was invited to address Congress on Lincoln’s birthday.

In his Complete Poems, for which he won a Pulitzer, 1951, Carl Sandburg wrote:

“All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.

At sixty-five I began my first novel…

It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine…I might paraphrase:

‘If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.'”

Carl Sandburg wrote:

“When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from.”

America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations

President Ronald Reagan stated in his State of the Union Address, January 25, 1984:

“Each day your members observe a 200-year-old tradition meant to
signify America is one nation under God.

I must ask: If you can begin your day with a member of the clergy standing right here leading you in prayer, then why can’t freedom to acknowledge God be enjoyed again by children in every school room across this land?

America was founded by people who believed that God was their rock of safety. I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it’s all right to keep asking if we’re on His side….

Carl Sandburg said, ‘I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair… I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.'”