U.S. President (1809-1865)
Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from the land we inhabit, not from our national homestead. There is no possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors separation. In fact it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
annual message, December 1, 1862
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities." Another bluntly calls them "self-evident lies." And others insidiously argue that they apply to "superior races." These expressions, different in form, are identical in object and effect -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the vanguard, the miner and sappers, of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to H. L. Pierce and others, April 6, 1859
Judge Douglas and I have made perhaps forty speeches apiece, and we have now for the fifth time met face to face to debate, and up to this day I have not found either Judge Douglas or any friend of his taking hold of the Republican platform or laying his finger upon anything in it that is wrong.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
The judge has also detained us awhile in regard to the distinction between his party and our party. His he assumes to be a national party--ours a sectional one. He does this in asking the question whether this country has any interest in the maintenance of the Republican party? He assumes that our party is altogether sectional--that the party to which he adheres is national; and the argument is that no party can be a rightful party--can be based upon rightful principles--unless it can announce its principles everywhere. I presume that Judge Douglas could not go into Russia and announce the doctrine of national Democracy; he could not denounce the doctrine of kings and emperors and monarchies in Russia; and it may be true of this country, that in some places we may not be able to proclaim a doctrine as clearly true as the truth of Democracy, because there is a section so directly opposed to it that they will not tolerate us in doing so. Is it the true test of the soundness of a doctrine, that in some places people won't let you proclaim it? Is that the way to test the truth of any doctrine?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
It strikes me there is some difference between holding a man responsible for an act which he has not done, and holding him responsible for an act that he has done.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 13, 1858
I confess, when I propose a certain measure of policy, it is not enough for me that I do not intend anything evil in the result, but it is incumbent on me to show that it has not a tendency to that result.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 15, 1858
I do not rise to speak now, if I can stipulate with the audience to meet me here at half-past six or at seven o'clock. It is now several minutes past five, and Judge Douglas has spoken over three hours. If you hear me at all, I wish you to hear me through. It will take me as long as it has taken him. That will carry us beyond eight o'clock at night. Now, every one of you who can remain that long can just as well get his supper, meet me at seven, and remain an hour or two later. The Judge has already informed you that he is to have an hour to reply to me. I doubt not but you have been a little surprised to learn that I have consented to give one of his high reputation and known ability this advantage of me. Indeed, my consenting to it, though reluctant, was not wholly unselfish, for I suspected, if it were understood that the Judge was entirely done, you Democrats would leave and not hear me; but by giving him the close, I felt confident you would stay for the fun of hearing him skin me.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854
When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Peoria, Illinois, in reply to Senator Douglas, October 16, 1854
In this troublesome world, we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business---no variety---it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me. I hate to sit down and direct documents, and I hate to stay in this old room by myself.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to his wife, April 16, 1848
I will add this, that if there be any man who does not believe that slavery is wrong in the three aspects which I have mentioned, or in any one of them, that man is misplaced and ought to leave us. While, on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican party who is impatient over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the constitutional guaranties thrown around it, and would act in disregard of these, he too is misplaced, standing with us. He will find his place somewhere else; for we have a due regard, so far as we are capable of understanding them, for all these things.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 13, 1858
I have all the while maintained that in so far as it should be insisted that there was an equality between the white and black races that should produce a perfect social and political equality, it was an impossibility.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
I have believed that in the Republican situation in Illinois, if we, the Republicans of this State, had made Judge Douglas our candidate for the Senate of the United States last year, and had elected him, there would today be no Republican party in this Union. I believe that the principles around which we have rallied and organized that party would live; they will live under all circumstances, while we will die. They would reproduce another party in the future. But in the meantime all the labor that has been done to build up the present Republican party would be entirely lost, and perhaps twenty years of time, before we would again have formed around that principle as solid, extensive, and formidable an organization as we have, standing shoulder to shoulder, tonight, in harmony and strength around the Republican banner.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech in Chicago, March 1, 1859
Now my opinion is that the different States have the power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution of the United States, if they choose.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
Republicans are for both the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the man before the dollar.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
attributed, Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era
I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.... I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior assigned to the white race.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
fourth debate with Stephen Douglas, Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858
The Republican party think [slavery] wrong--we think it is a moral, a social, and a political wrong. We think it is a wrong not confining itself merely to the persons or the States where it exists, but that it is a wrong which in its tendency, to say the least, affects the existence of the whole nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 13, 1858
The fathers of the government expected and intended the institution of slavery to come to an end. They expected and intended that it should be in the course of ultimate extinction. And when I say that I desire to see the further spread of it arrested, I only say I desire to see that done which the fathers have first done.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 15, 1858
The truth about the matter is this: Judge Douglas has sung paeans to his "popular sovereignty" doctrine until his Supreme Court, cooperating with him, has squatted his squatter sovereignty out. But he will keep up this species of humbuggery about squatter sovereignty. He has at last invented this sort of do-nothing sovereignty--that the people may exclude slavery by a sort of "sovereignty" that is exercised by doing nothing at all. Is not that running his popular sovereignty down awfully? Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 13, 1858
Now a few words in regard to these extracts from speeches of mine which Judge Douglas has read to you, and which he supposes are in very great contrast to each other. Those speeches have been before the public for a considerable time, and if they have any inconsistency in them, if there is any conflict in them, the public have been able to detect it. When the judge says, in speaking on this subject, that I make speeches of one sort for the people of the northern end of the State, and of a different sort for the southern people, he assumes that I do not understand that my speeches will be put in print and read north and south.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
But if the judge continues to put forward the declaration that there is an unholy, unnatural alliance between the Republicans and the National Democrats, I now want to enter my protest against receiving him as an entirely competent witness upon the subject.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858