Jul 10, 1858
You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people,--not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden.
Abraham Lincoln
The Public Record
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. A member of the Republican Party, he is best known for leading the nation through the Civil War and for his efforts to abolish slavery, notably through the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Lincoln's leadership during this tumultuous period helped to preserve the Union and set the stage for the eventual passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States.
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Jul 10, 1858
They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world.
Jul 10, 1858
Now, I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and indorsed, if taught to our children and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform…
Jul 10, 1858
That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together; that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
Jul 10, 1858
My understanding is, that I need not have her for either; but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby.
Jul 10, 1858
I protest, now and for ever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that, because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife.
Jul 10, 1858
If Republican men have been in earnest in what they have done, I think they had better not do it; but I think the Republican party is made up of those who, as far as they can peaceably, will oppose the extension of slavery, and who will…
Jul 10, 1858
Plainly, you stand ready saddled, bridled, and harnessed, and waiting to be driven over to the slavery-extension camp of the nation,--just ready to be driven over, tied together in a lot,--to be driven over, every man with a rope around…
Jul 10, 1858
Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made; and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.
Jul 10, 1858
If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new Territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.
Jul 10, 1858
But I am doing no such thing as that; all that I am doing is refusing to obey it as a political rule.
Jul 10, 1858
But for the thing itself I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency in advocating it.
Jul 10, 1858
I have said very many times in Judge Douglas's hearing that no man believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies at the bottom of all my ideas of just government from beginning to end.
Jul 10, 1858
I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States, to enter into the slave States and interfere with the question…
Jul 10, 1858
What were they but a clear indication that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that institution?
Jul 10, 1858
The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led the people to believe so, and that such was the belief of the framers of the Constitution itself.
Jul 10, 1858
I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any Abolitionist,--I have been an old-line Whig,--I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska bill began.
Jul 10, 1858
I believe it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
Jul 10, 1858
I said that "we are now far into the fifth year since a policy was instituted for the avowed object and with the confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation; under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not…
Jun 17, 1858
Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it; but sooner or later the victory is sure to come.
Jun 17, 1858
Did we brave all then to falter now?--now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent?
Jun 17, 1858
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result.
Jun 17, 1858
To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation.
Jun 17, 1858
We shall lie down, pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.
Jun 17, 1858
Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown.
Politicians like Abraham Lincoln
