U.S. President (1809-1865)
On the question of liberty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self-evident truth, but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self-evident lie." The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day--for burning fire-crackers!
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to George Robertson, August 15, 1855
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
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
This slavery element is a durable element of discord among us, and ... we shall probably not have perfect peace in this country with it until it either masters the free principle in our government, or is so far mastered by the free principle as for the public mind to rest in the belief that it is going to end.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 1859
Whatever may be the result of this ephemeral contest between Judge Douglas and myself, I see the day rapidly approaching when his pill of sectionalism, which he has been thrusting down the throats of Republicans for years past, will be crowded down his own throat.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
He who does something at the head of one regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Major General David Hunter, December 31, 1861
Now, at this day in the history of the world we can no more foretell where the end of this slavery agitation will be than we can see the end of the world itself.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
Take these two things and consider them together, present the question of planting a State with the institution of slavery by the side of a question of who shall be governor of Kansas for a year or two, and is there a man here--is there a man on earth--who would not say the governor question is the little one, and the slavery question is the great one? I ask any honest Democrat if the small, the local, and the trivial and temporary question is not, Who shall be governor?--while the durable, the important and the mischievous one is, Shall this soil be planted with slavery?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 1859
The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to William H. Herndon, February 15, 1848
Each man shall do precisely as he pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively concern him.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 1859
I entertain the opinion, upon evidence sufficient to my mind, that the fathers of this government placed that institution where the public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. Let me ask why they made provision that the source of slavery--the African slave-trade--should be cut off at the end of twenty years? Why did they make provision that in all the new territory we owned at that time, slavery should be forever inhibited? Why stop its spread in one direction and cut off its source in another, if they did not look to its being placed in the course of ultimate extinction?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 15, 1858
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
If we do not allow ourselves to be allured from the strict path of our duty by such a device as shifting our ground and throwing us into the rear of a leader who denies our first principle, denies that there is an absolute wrong in the institution of slavery, then the future of the Republican cause is safe, and victory is assured.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech in Chicago, March 1, 1859
Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery they have a right to have it. He can say that logically, if he says that there is no wrong in slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
Property is the fruit of labor--property is desirable--is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association, March 21, 1864
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
I wish to return to Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public annunciation here today to be put on record, that his system of policy in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall last forever. We are getting a little nearer the true issue of this controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge Douglas asks you, "Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made it forever?" In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 13, 1858
If you have ever studied geometry, you remember that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all the angles in a triangle are equal to the two right angles. Euclid has shown how to work it out. Now, if you undertake to disprove that proposition, and to show that it is erroneus, would you prove it to be false by calling Euclid a liar?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
Judge Douglas has again, for, I believe, the fifth time, if not the seventh, in my presence, reiterated his charge of a conspiracy or combination between the National Democrats and Republicans. What evidence Judge Douglas has upon this subject I know not, inasmuch as he never favors us with any.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, October 7, 1858
I cannot but express gratitude that the true view of this element of discord among us--as I believe it is--is attracting more and more attention.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech at Columbus, Ohio, September 16, 1859