The public credit, moreover, would be greatly improved and the negotiation of new loans greatly facilitated by the steady market demand for Government bonds which the adoption of the proposed system would create.
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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These notes, prepared under the supervision of proper officers, being uniform in appearance and security and convertible always into coin, would at once protect labor against the evils of a vicious currency and facilitate commerce by cheap…
I know of none which promises so certain results and is at the same time so unobjectionable as the organization of banking associations, under a general act of Congress, well guarded in its provisions.
Fluctuations in the value of currency are always injurious, and to reduce these fluctuations to the lowest possible point will always be a leading purpose in wise legislation.
Every step in that direction would have a tendency to improve the revenues of the Government and diminish the burdens of the people.
The Territories of the United States, with unimportant exceptions have remained undisturbed by the civil war; and they are exhibiting such evidence of prosperity as justifies an expectation that some of them will soon be in a condition to…
I have favored the project for connecting the United States with Europe by an Atlantic telegraph, and a similar project to extend the telegraph from San Francisco to connect by a Pacific telegraph with the line which is being extended…
Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers.
Men, with their families--wives, sons, and daughters--work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or…
Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.
Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer.
This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent.
It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor.
In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.
Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people.
A disloyal portion of the American people have during the whole year been engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union.
In a storm at sea no one on board can wish the ship to sink, and yet not unfrequently all go down together because too many will direct and no single mind can be allowed to control.
And the same is true in all joint operations wherein those engaged can have none but a common end in view and can differ only as to the choice of means.
It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and…
After a somewhat bloody struggle of months, winter closes on the Union people of western Virginia, leaving them masters of their own country.
Missouri is comparatively quiet, and, I believe, can not again be overrun by the insurrectionists.
Kentucky, too, for some time in doubt, is now decidedly and, I think, unchangeably ranged on the side of the Union.
What was painfully uncertain then is much better defined and more distinct now, and the progress of events is plainly in the right direction.
The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault upon Fort Sumter, and a general review of what has occurred since may not be unprofitable.
The Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed.
Politicians like Abraham Lincoln
