Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Martin Luther King (1929-1968) wrote with an astounding historical importance extending well beyond their own time. As a young lawyer Lincoln was concerned with the high degree of lawlessness surrounding him. Leery of the growing rage of the mob rising in mid-nineteenth century America Lincoln penned The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions arguing for the importance of civil law and the necessity of civil obedience. Nearly a century later the unjust and racially prejudicial society framing King forced him to dissent and compose the now justly famous essay Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963. Choosing to center an antisegregration drive in Birmingham, Alabama, King wrote this piece as a rallying cry to join the nonviolent movement beginning to stir in the…