A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.
From his first inaugural, Lincoln defined the true sovereign of a free people as a constitutionally restrained majority responsive to public opinion.
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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?
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…
I do the very best I know how--the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end.
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