The movements by State action for emancipation in several of the States not included in the emancipation proclamation are matters of profound gratulation.
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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I may add at this point that while I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation or by any of…
In my judgment, they have aided and will further aid the cause for which they were intended.
There must be a test by which to separate the opposing elements, so as to build only from the sound; and that test is a sufficiently liberal one which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness.
Of those States not included in the emancipation proclamation, Maryland and Missouri, neither of which three years ago would tolerate any restraint upon the extension of slavery into new Territories, only dispute now as to the best mode of…
Tennessee and Arkansas have been substantially cleared of insurgent control, and influential citizens in each, owners of slaves and advocates of slavery at the beginning of the rebellion, now declare openly for emancipation in their…
Those nations, however, not improbably saw from the first that it was the Union which made as well our foreign as our domestic commerce.
This noble effort demands the aid and ought to receive the attention and support of the Government.
It is easy to see that under the sharp discipline of civil war the nation is beginning a new life.
I submit the expediency of such an amendment of the law as will make the fact of voting an estoppel against any plea of exemption from military service or other civil obligation on the ground of alienage.
Other means may succeed; this could not fail.
We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.
Can we, can they, by any other means so certainly or so speedily assure these vital objects?
Will not the good people respond to a united and earnest appeal from us?
Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national prosperity and perpetuate both indefinitely?
Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood?
This assurance would end the struggle now and save the Union forever.
It is much, very much, that it would cost no blood at all.
The plan would, I am confident, secure peace more speedily and maintain it more permanently than can be done by force alone, while all it would cost, considering amounts and manner of payment and times of payment, would be easier paid than…
Reduce the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and by precisely so much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor.
Labor is like any other commodity in the market--increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it.
Emancipation, even without deportation, would probably enhance the wages of white labor, and very surely would not reduce them.
If we could dare to believe that foreign nations are actuated by no higher principle than this, I am quite sure a sound argument could be made to show them that they can reach their aim more readily and easily by aiding to crush this…
Politicians like Abraham Lincoln
