Abraham Lincoln

A right result at this time, will be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money.

So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the government, and so to resist force employed for its destruction by force for its preservation.

It forces us to ask: "Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?" "Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy--a government of the people by the same people--can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.

In this act, discarding all else, they have forced upon the country the distinct issue, "immediate dissolution or blood.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the…

Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.

You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favoured land, are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.

If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action.

If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very…

If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?

His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States.

Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.

The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.