Historical voices

Outside the question of slavery my thoughts had not been much directed, and I could hardly hope to make myself useful in any other cause than that to which I had given the best twenty-five years of my life.

My public life and labors had unfitted me for the pursuits of my earlier years, and yet had not prepared me for more congenial and higher employment.

The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.

I felt I had reached the end of the noblest and best part of my life; my school was broken up, my church disbanded, and the beloved congregation dispersed, never to come together again.

My great and exceeding joy over these stupendous achievements, especially over the abolition of slavery (which had been the deepest desire and the great labor of my life), was slightly tinged with a feeling of sadness.

A simple leaden bullet, and a few grains of powder, in the shortest limit of time, are sufficient to blast and ruin all that is precious in human existence, not alone of the murdered, but of the murderer.

But, alas! what are all good and great qualities; what are human hopes and human happiness to the revengeful hand of an assassin?

His eyes had in them the tenderness of motherhood, and his mouth and other features the highest perfection of a genuine manhood.

He always impressed me as a strong, earnest man, having no time or disposition to trifle; grappling with all his might the work he had in hand.

A country, redeemed and regenerated from the foulest crime against human nature that ever saw the sun!

Heavy had been his burden, hard had been his toil, bitter had been his trials, and terrible had been his anxiety; but the future seemed now bright and full of hope.

It was not so much the need of the union, as the need of himself, that he should speak; the time when the union needed him, and all others, was when the slaveholding rebellion raised its defiant head, not when as now, that head was in the…

The son of common people, wealth and education had done little for him; but he had in him a true heart, and a world of common sense; and these with industry, good habits, and perseverance, had carried him further and lifted him higher…

I have found in my experience that the way to break down an unreasonable custom, is to contradict it in practice.

I had for some time looked upon myself as a man, but now in this multitude of the élite of the land, I felt myself a man among men.

There are moments in the lives of most men, when the doors of their souls are open, and unconsciously to themselves, their true characters may be read by the observant eye.

A wink or a nod from such men might unchain the hand of violence and set order and law at defiance.

But desperation discards logic as well as law, and the South was desperate.

It had reached that verge of madness when it had called upon the negro for help to fight against the freedom which he so longed to find, for the bondage he would escape--against Lincoln the Emancipator for Davis the enslaver.

His first inauguration arrested the fall of the Republic, and the second was to restore it to enduring foundations.

Since William the Silent, who was the soul of the mighty war for religious liberty against Spain and the Spanish inquisition, no leader of men has been loved and trusted in such generous measure as Abraham Lincoln.

No doubt it would have “patched up” a peace, but it would have been a peace more to be dreaded than war.

All that had been done towards suppressing the rebellion and abolishing slavery would have proved of no avail, and the final settlement between the two sections of the Republic, touching slavery and the right of secession, would have been…

It is needless to say that the success of such a party, on such a platform, with such a candidate, at such a time would have been a fatal calamity.