Is that irresistible power which for fifty years has shaken the government and agitated the people, to be stilled and subdued by pretending that it is an exceedingly simple thing, and we ought not to talk about it?
In his final debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln challenged the notion that the deeply divisive issue of slavery could be resolved by simply ignoring it.
Share
More from Abraham Lincoln
If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
He said, with a great deal of emphasis, and with an expression of countenance I shall never forget: "When a man is sincerely penitent for his misdeeds, and gives satisfactory evidence of the same, he can safely be pardoned, and there is no…
Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it, than by running backward over them?
Other voices in this conversation
