Political Quotes

“I thank the distinguished gentleman from New York, the chair of our Caucus, for yielding. I listened intently to the litany that the minority leader chose to deliver, and I watched and looked through a lens of history about his admonitions about our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln, and they were all well-stated. I think the bottom line, though, is that, in any debate, there ought to be real context. So there are other things that Lincoln said that are relevant to this debate as well. In 1848, in a speech delivered in Edwardsville, Illinois, he spoke these words to his countrymen. He said: When you have succeeded in dehumanizing the Negro; when you have put him down and made it impossible for him to be but as the beasts of the field; when you have extinguished his soul in this world and placed him where the ray of hope is blown out as in the darkness of the damned, are you quite sure that the demon you have roused will not turn and rend you? Lincoln went on to say: Destroy the Negro's spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doorstep. He said: Ignore the chains of bondage, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Finally, he said: Accustomed to trample on the rights and the freedoms of others, and you would have lost the creative genius of your own independence, and then become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.…”