Abraham Lincoln

Under the impulse of that occasion, nearly half the States adopted systems of emancipation at once; and it is a significant fact that not a single State has done the like since.

That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery has itself become extinct with the occasion and the men of the Revolution.

On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been.

I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it for ever worthy of the saving.

Let North and South, let all Americans, let all lovers of liberty everywhere, join in the great and good work.

Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it.

Let us turn slavery from its claims of moral right, back upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of necessity.

Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit if not the blood of the Revolution.

Our Republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust.

Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a sacred right of self-government.

Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit of their age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and toleration only by necessity.

The argument of "necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favour of slavery, and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did they ever go.

Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

It is a grave question for lovers of the Union, whether the final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these, and fatally increase the number of…

The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which first gave us the Constitution, and has thrice saved the Union--we shall have strangled and cast from us for ever.

But whether it be or not, we shall have repudiated--discarded from the councils of the nation--the spirit of compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national compromise?

Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history,--you still cannot repeal human nature.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it in his love of justice.

What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

If the negro is a man, then my ancient faith teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government,--that is despotism.

But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he, too, shall not govern himself?

The doctrine of self-government is right,--absolutely and internally right; but it has no just application as here attempted.

My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me.