James Blaine

Lincoln had announced a different creed, and every week that the South continued peaceful, his hope of amicable adjustment grew stronger.

Lincoln desired to prevent war, and he felt that every day of peace gave fresh hope that bloodshed might be avoided.

The overwhelming public desire after all was for peace, and the overwhelming public opinion was against the extremists who would, by any possibility, precipitate war.

Douglas showed in this debate how absolutely groundless was the excuse of slave-holders for basing secession or revolution upon the failure to acquire their rights in the Territories, when never before had their rights in the Territories…

It is a singular fact that, on the eve of the utter destruction of the institution of Slavery, its legal status was stronger than ever before in the history of the government, and the area over which it might lawfully spread was far larger…

Never before in the existence of the Federal Government had its territory been so open, by Congressional enactment and by judicial decision, to the slave-holder as on the day that Abraham Lincoln assumed the office of President of the…

Palliation, conciliation, concession, compromise, were the only words heard, and the almost universal opinion in the South, shared largely by the North, was that to precipitate war would be to abandon the last hope for restoration of the…

I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as a declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.

Lincoln, by his Inaugural address, set himself free from all logical entanglements.

Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection.

You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.

You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors.

Anarchy and disorder in the North would at that time have proved so advantageous to the leaders of Secession, that the apprehension was firmly fixed in the Northern mind that some attempt would be made to bring it about.

The tone of Secretary Holt's report to the President in regard to the marshaling of troops in the National Capital was a manifestation of courage in refreshing contrast with the surrounding timidity.

He came as one appointed to a great duty, not with rashness, not with weakness, not with bravado, not with shrinking, but in the perfect confidence of a just cause and with the stainless conscience of a good man.

Lincoln possessed a certain calmness, firmness, and faith that enabled him to meet any responsibility, and to stand unappalled in any peril.

A man of ordinary courage would have been overwhelmed by the task before him.

Let us do one thing at a time and the big things first" was his homely but expressive way of indicating the wisdom of his course.

He could not afford by imprudent forwardness of speech or premature declaration of measures to increase the embarrassment which already surrounded him.

He saw that the one thing needful was his regular, constitutional inauguration as President of the United States.

He had the practical faculty of discerning the chief point to be reached, and then bending every energy to reach it.

The main result of these misconceptions was a steady and rapid growth of strength throughout the slave States in the movement for Secession.

These men did not yet measure the full scope of the combination against the Union, and persisted in believing that its worst enemies were in the North.

Abolitionism was but another name for the Republican party, and in business circles in the free State that party had come to represent the source of all our trouble.

Men who afterwards attested their loyalty to the Union by their lives, took part in this dangerous scheme of encouraging a revolt which they could not repress.