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 Lincoln's words on living questions 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 032 772 638 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032772638 
 
^9 
 
 Lincoln's Words 
 on Living Questions 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 H. S. TAYLOR 
 Amo D. M. FULWILER 
 
 TRUSTY PUBLISHING CO. 
 4t9 RotUHtka Bldg. GHIOAGO, ILL. 
 
LINCOLN'S WORDS ON 
 LIVING QUESTIONS 
 
 A COLLECTION 
 
 OF AM, THE RECORDED UTTERANCES OF ABRAHAM LIN- 
 
 C01,N BEARING UPON THE QUESTIONS 
 
 OF TODAY. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 H. S. TA YLOR and D. M. FUL WILER 
 
 Paper, 25 cents. Cloth, 75 cents 
 
 The Trosty Publishing Company ■ 
 
 \ 418 Roanoke Bldg., Ciilcago, 111. 
 
— ? ■7' 
 
 Copjrriglited 1900, 
 by 
 
 H. S. TATI.OR. 
 
 MOAN PRINTINQ HOUSE, OHIOAQO 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 At the present time, when our Great Republic seems to 
 be rapidly entering upon new and untried ways of profound 
 moment to us and our posterity, it is but a reasonable 
 prudence that the American people should seek counsel from 
 the now universally admitted wisdom and patriotism of 
 Abraham Lincoi,n. To facilitate such inquiry is the 
 purpose of this book. 
 
 In the following pages are presented, as we believe, every 
 recorded quotable expression of Mr. Lincoln bearing upon 
 questions of to-day, with dates and places of delivery and 
 with authorities therefor cited. For convenience these 
 quotations have been arranged topically. Every accessible 
 source of information has been attentively examined by the 
 editors, patiently and fairly, with the purpose of collecting 
 in one compact volume everything of enduring value and 
 present application that ever fell from the lips or flowed 
 from the pen of the Great Emancipator. 
 
 In the course of our investigations, besides numerous 
 files of old newspapers, pamphlets, etc., the following well 
 known authors have been consulted, viz. : — Bancroft, 
 Sumner, Arnold, Barrett, Brockett, Hemdon and Weik, Ray- 
 mond, Hanaford, Howells, Powers, Piatt, Townsend, Schurz, 
 Coffin, Morse, VanBuren, Gilmore, Lamon, Tarbell and 
 Davis, Hapgood, Nicolay and Hay, Carpenter, Irelan, Kelly, 
 Stoddard, Coggeshall, Boyd, Tarbell and Shibley. 
 
 H. S. TAYLOR. 
 D. M. FULWILER. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 [The numbers refer to sections.] 
 
 Autobiography of Lincoln I 
 
 Capital, Land and Labor I35-IS9 
 
 Constitution and the Law 84-109 
 
 Courts and the People 110-121 
 
 Declaration of Independence, meaning and purpose.2-19, 225 
 
 Elections and Suffrage 122-134 
 
 Emancipation, War, Peace, Temperance 227-250 
 
 Equality 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19 
 
 Expansion and Foreign Policy 160-169 
 
 Foreign Policy and Expansion 160-169 
 
 Fusion, Party Policy, etc 191-226 
 
 Government and the People. . . : 38-83 
 
 Gold, Silver, Greenbacks, Money 170-186 
 
 Greenbacks, Gold, Silver, Money 170-186 
 
 Labor, Land and Capital I3S-I59 
 
 Law and Constitution 84-109 
 
 Land, Labor and Capital I3S-IS9 
 
 Liberty • • 20-37 
 
 Lovejoy Owen 239 
 
 Money, Greenbacks, Silver, Gold 170-186 
 
 Miscellany, War, Peace, Temperance 227-250 
 
 Party Policy, Fusion 191-226 
 
 People and Gqaernment 38-83 
 
 People and the Courts 110-121 
 
 Peace, War, Temperance 227-250 
 
 President, Duties and Powers of 86, 89, 97, 102 
 
 Silver, Gold, Greenbacks, Money 170-186 
 
 Suffrage and Elections 122-134 
 
 Tariff 186-190 
 
 Temperance, War, Peace 227-250 
 
 War, Temperance, Peace 227-250 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
 I 
 
 (December 20, 1859, Letter to J. W. Fell— Complete Works, NIoo- 
 lay and Hay, Vol. I, p. 696.) 
 
 J. W. Fell, Esq. 
 
 My dear Sir: Herewith is a little sketch, as you 
 requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, 
 I suppose, that there is not much of me. If any- 
 thing be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and 
 not to go beyond the material. If it were thought 
 necessary to incorporate anything from any of my 
 speeches, I suppose there would be no objection. 
 Of course it must not appear to have been written 
 by myself. Yours very truly. A. Lincoln. 
 
 I was born February la, 1809, in Hardin county, 
 Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, 
 of undistinguished families — second families, per- 
 haps I should say. My mother, who died in my 
 tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, 
 some of whom now reside in Adams, and others 
 in Macon county, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, 
 Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham 
 county, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, 
 where a year or two later he was killed by the 
 
6 Autobiography 
 
 Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was 
 laboring to open a farm in the forest. His an- 
 cestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from 
 Berks county, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify 
 them with the New England family of the same 
 name ended in hothing more definite than a similar- 
 ity of Christian names in both families, such as 
 Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and 
 the like. 
 
 My father at the death of his father was but six 
 years of age, and he grew up literally without edu- 
 cation. He removed from Kentucky to what is 
 now Spencer county, Indiana, in my eighth year. 
 We reached our new home about the time the State 
 came into the Union. It was a wild region, with 
 many bears and other wild animals still in the 
 woods. There I grew up. There were some 
 schools, so called, but no qualification was ever re- 
 quired of a teacher beyond "readin", writin', and 
 cipherin' to the rule of three." If a straggler sup- 
 posed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in 
 the neighborhood, he was looked upon as. a wizard. 
 There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for 
 education. Of course, when I came of age I did 
 not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write 
 and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. 
 I have not been to school since. The little advance 
 I now have upon this store of education I have 
 
Autobiography n 
 
 picked up from time to time under the pressure of 
 necessity. 
 
 I was raised to farm work, which I continued 
 till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came 
 to Illinois^ Macon county. Then I got to New 
 Salem, at the time in Sangamon, now in Men- 
 ard county, where I remained a year as a sort 
 of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk 
 war, and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a 
 success that gave me more pleasure than any I have 
 had since. I went through the campaign, was 
 elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) 
 and was beaten — the only time I ever have been 
 beaten by the people. The next and three suc- 
 ceeding biennial elections I was elected to the Leg- 
 islature. I was not a candidate afterward. During 
 this legislative period I had studied law, and re- 
 moved to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was 
 once elected to the Lower House of Congress. Was 
 not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, 
 both inclusive, practised more assiduously than ever 
 before. Always a Whig in politics; and generally 
 on the Whig electoral tickets, making active can- 
 vasses. I was losing interest in politics when the 
 repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me 
 again. What I have done since then is pretty well 
 known. 
 
 If any personal description of me is thought de- 
 
8 Autobiography 
 
 sirable, it may be said I am, in height, six feet four 
 inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an aver- 
 age one hundred and eighty pounds; dark com- 
 plexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No 
 other marks or brands recollected. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 Hon. J. W. Fell. A. Lincoln. 
 
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 
 MEANING AND PURPOSE. 
 
 (August 12, 1858, Speech at Beardstown, 111.— Ll£e by Herndon, 
 p. 416. Speaking of the Fathers of the Republic.) 
 
 These by their representatives in old Independ- 
 ence Hall said to the whole race of men : "We hold 
 these truths to be self-evident: that all men are 
 created equal; that they are endowed by their Cre- 
 ator with certain inalienable rights; that among 
 these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
 This was their majestic interpretation of the econ- 
 omy of the universe. This was their lofty, and wise, 
 and noble understanding of the justice of the Crea- 
 tor to His creatures. Yes, gentlemen, to all his 
 creatures, to the whole great family of man. In 
 their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the 
 divine image and likeness was sent into the world 
 to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted by its 
 fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of 
 man then living, but they reached forward and 
 seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected 
 a beacon to guide their children, and their children's 
 children, and the countless myriads who should in- 
 
lo Declaration of Independence 
 
 habit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as 
 they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to 
 breed tyrants, and so they established these great 
 self-evident truths, that when, in the distant future, 
 some man, some faction, some interest, should set 
 up the doctrine that none but rich men, none but 
 white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men 
 were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
 piness, their posterity might look up again to the 
 Declaration of Independence and take courage to 
 renew the battle which their fathers began, so that 
 truth and justice and mercy and all the humane 
 and Christian virtues might not be extinguished 
 from the land ; so that no man would hereafter dare 
 to limit and circumscribe the great principles on 
 which the temple of liberty was being built. 
 
 Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught 
 doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of 
 the Declaration of Independence; if you have lis- 
 tened to suggestions which would take away from 
 its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its 
 proportions; if you have been incHned to believe 
 that all men are not created equal in those inalien- 
 able rights enumerated by our chart of liberty; let 
 me entreat you to come back. Return to the foun- 
 tain whose waters spring close by the blood of the 
 Revolution. Think nothing of me ; take no thought 
 for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but 
 
Meatiing and Purpose 1 1 
 
 come back to the truths that are in the Declaration 
 of Independence. You may do anything with me 
 you choose, if you will but heed these sacred prin- 
 ciples. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, 
 but you may take me and put me to death. While 
 pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do 
 claim to be actuated in this contest by something 
 higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to 
 drop every paltry and insignificant thought for 
 any man's success. It is nothing; I am nothing; 
 Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that 
 immortal emblem of humanity — the Declaration of 
 American Independence! 
 
 (February 22, 1861, Speech at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 
 Pa.— Life by Raymond, p. 154.) 
 
 I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself 
 standing here, in this place, where were collected 
 the wisdom, patriotism, the devotion to principle, 
 from which sprang the institutions under which we 
 live. 
 
 You have kindly suggested to me that in my 
 hands is the task of restoring peace to the present 
 distracted condition of the country. I can say in 
 return, sir, that all the political sentiments I enter- 
 tain have been drawn, so far as I have been able 
 to draw them, from the sentiments which originated 
 
12 Declaration of Independence 
 
 and were given to the world from this hall. I have 
 never had a feeling politically that did not spring 
 from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of 
 Independence. I have often pondered over the dan- 
 gers which were incurred by the men who as- 
 sembled here and framed and adopted the Declara- 
 tion of Independence. I have pondered over the 
 toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers 
 of the army who achieved that independence. 
 
 * * * I have often inquired of myself what 
 great principle or idea it was that kept this con- 
 federacy so long together. It was not the mere 
 matter of the separation of the colonies from the 
 mother land, but that sentiment in the Declaration 
 of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to 
 the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world 
 for all future time. It was that which gave promise 
 that in due time the weight would be lifted from 
 the shoulders of all men. This is the sentiment em- 
 bodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, 
 my friends, can this country be saved on this basis? 
 If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest 
 men in the world if I can help to save it. If it can- 
 not be saved on that principle it will be truly awful. 
 But if this country cannot be saved without giving 
 up that principle, I was about to say, I would rather 
 be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. * * 
 * I have said nothing but what I am willing to live 
 
Meaning and Purpose 1 3 
 
 by, and if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to 
 die by. 
 
 4 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speech at Chicago, III.— Debates, p. 22.) 
 
 Now it happens that we meet together once every 
 year, sometimes about the Fourth of July for some 
 reason or other. These Fourth of July gatherings I 
 suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me I 
 will state what I suppose to be some of them. 
 
 We are now a mighty nation; we are thirty or 
 about thirty millions of people, and we own and in- 
 habit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the 
 whole earth. We run our memory back over the 
 pages of history for about eighty-two years, and we 
 discover that we were then a very small people in 
 point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are 
 now, with a vastly less extent of country, with 
 vastly less of everything we deem desirable among 
 men. We look upon the change as exceedingly ad- 
 vantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix 
 upon something that happened away back as in 
 some way or other being connected with this rise 
 of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that 
 day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers ; 
 they were iron men; they fought for the principle 
 they were contending for; and we uriderstood that 
 by what they then did it has followed that the de- 
 
14 Declaration of Independence 
 
 gree of prosperity which we now enjoy has come to 
 us. We hold this annual celebration to remind our- 
 selves of all the good done in this process of time, 
 of how it was done and who did it, and how we are 
 historically connected with it; and we go from these 
 meetings in better humor with ourselves, we feel 
 more attached, the one to the other, and more 
 firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every 
 way we are better men in the age and race and 
 country in which we live for these celebrations. But 
 after we have done all this we have not yet reached 
 the whole. There is something else connected with 
 it. We have besides these, men — descended by 
 blood from our ancestors — among us, perhaps half 
 of our people, who are not descendants at all of 
 these men; they are men who have come from 
 Europe — German, Irish, French and Scandinavian 
 — men that have come from Europe themselves, or 
 whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, 
 finding themselves our equals in all things. If they 
 look back through this history to trace their con- 
 nection with those days by blood they find they have 
 none. They cannot carry themselves back into that 
 glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they 
 are part of us, but when they look through that old 
 Declaration of Independence they find that those old 
 men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evi- 
 dent, that all men are created equal," and then they 
 
Meaning and Purpose 15 
 
 feel that that moral sentiment, taught in that day, 
 evidences their relation to those men, that it is the 
 father of all moral principle in them and that they 
 have a right to claim it as though they were blood 
 of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who 
 wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the 
 electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts 
 of patriotic and liberty-loving mea together, that 
 will hnk those patriotic hearts as long as the love of 
 freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the 
 world. 
 
 5 
 
 (February 21, 1861, Address to the Senate of New Jersey.— Lite by 
 Hanatord, p. 69.) 
 
 Away back in my childhood, the earliest days of 
 my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, 
 such a one as few of the younger members have 
 ever seen — " Weem's Life of Washington ." I re- 
 member all the accounts there given of the battle- 
 fields and struggles for the liberty of the country, 
 and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so 
 deeply as the struggle here at Trenton, New Jersey. 
 The crossing of the river, the contest with the Hes- 
 sians, the great hardships endured at that time, all 
 fixed themselves on my memory more than any 
 single Revolutionary event; and you all know, for ^ 
 you have all been boys, how these early impressions 
 last longer than any others. I recollect thinking 
 
1 6 DedaratioTi of Independence 
 
 then, boy even though I was, that there must have 
 been something more than common that those men 
 struggled for. I am exceedingly anxious that that 
 thing which they struggled for, that something even 
 more than national independence, that something 
 that held out a great promise to all the people of 
 the world in all time to come — I am exceedingly 
 anxious that this Union, the Constitution and the 
 liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in ac- 
 cordance with the original idea for which that 
 struggle was made, and I shall be happy, indeed, if 
 I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the 
 Almighty, and of this. His almost chosen people, 
 for perpetuating the object of that great struggle. 
 
 (October 15, 1858, Speecli at Alton, 111.— Debates, p. 225.) 
 
 I think the authors of that notable instrument in- 
 tended to include all men, but they did not mean to 
 declare all men equal in all respects. They did not 
 mean to say that all men were equal in color, size, 
 intellect, moral development or social capacity. 
 They defined with tolerable distinctness in what 
 they did consider all men created equal — equal in 
 certain inalienable rights, among which are life, 
 liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This they said 
 and this they meant. They did not mean to assert 
 the obvious untruth, that all were then actually en- 
 
Meaning and Purpose 17 
 
 joying that equality, or yet, that they were about 
 to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they, 
 had no power to confer such a boon. They meant 
 simply to declare the right so that the enforcement 
 of it might follow as fast as circumstances should 
 permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for 
 free society which should be familiar to all; con- 
 stantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even, 
 though never perfectly attained, constantly approx- 
 imated, and thereby constantly spreading and 
 deepening its influence and augmenting the happi- 
 ness and value of life to all people of all colors, 
 everywhere. 
 
 7 
 
 (June 26, 1S57, Speech at Springfield, III.— Life and Speeches by 
 Howells, p. 181.) 
 
 The assertion "That all men are created equal" 
 was of no practical use in effecting our separation 
 from Great Britain; and it was placed in the 
 Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its 
 authors meant it to be — as, thank God, it is now 
 proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in 
 after times might seek to turn a free people back 
 into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the 
 proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants and they 
 meant, when such should reappear in this fair land 
 and commence their vocation, they should find left 
 for them, at least, one hard nut to crack. 
 
1 8 Declaration of Independctue 
 
 8 
 
 (June 2G, 1857, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Howells, p. 182. An- 
 swering Judge Douglas' argument that the Declaration was 
 adopted tor the purpose of Justifying the colonists In the 
 eyes ol the civilized world in withdrawing their allegiance 
 from the British crown.) 
 
 My good friends, read that carefully over some 
 leisure hour, and ponder well upon it; see what a 
 mere wreck — mangled ruin — it makes of our once 
 glorious Declaration. "They were speaking of Brit- 
 ish subjects on this continent being equal to British 
 subjects born and residing in Great Britain?" Why, 
 according to this, not only negroes but white people 
 outside of Great Britain and America were not 
 spoken of in that instrument. The English, Irish 
 and Scotch, along with white x\mericans, were in- 
 cluded, to be sure; but the French, Germans and 
 other white people of the world are all gone to pot 
 along with the Judge's inferior races! 
 
 I had thought that the Declaration promised 
 something better than the condition of British sub- 
 jects; but no, it only meant that we should be equal 
 to them in their own oppressed and unequal con- 
 dition. According to that it gave no promise that 
 having kicked ofl the king and lords- of Great Brit- 
 ain we should not at once be. saddled with a king 
 and lords of our own. I had thought the Declar- 
 ation contemplated the progressive improvement in 
 the condition of all men everywhere, but no it 
 merely "was adopted for the purpose of justifying 
 
Meaning and Purpose 19 
 
 the colonies in the eyes of the civiHzed world in 
 withdrawing their connection with the mother 
 country." 
 
 Why, that object having been effected some, 
 eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no practical 
 use now — mere rubbish — old wadding left to rot 
 on the battle-field after the victory is won. 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speecb at Chicago, III.— Debates, p. 23.) 
 
 Those arguments that are made, that the inferior 
 race are to be treated with as much allowance as 
 they are capable of enjoying, that as much is to be 
 done for them as their condition will allow, — what 
 are these arguments? They are the arguments that 
 kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages 
 of the world. You will find that all the arguments 
 in favor of king-craft were of this class ; they always 
 bestrode the necks of the people, not that they 
 wanted to do it, but because the people were better 
 off for being ridden. That is their argument. 
 * * * Turn in whatever way you will — whether 
 it come from the mouth of a king as an excuse for 
 enslaving the people of his country, or from the 
 mouth of men pf one race as a reason for enslaving 
 the men of another race, it is all the same old ser- 
 pent; and I hold if that course of argumentation 
 that is made for the purpose of convincing the pub- 
 
20 .'" Declaration of Independence 
 
 lie mind that we should not care about this, should 
 be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I 
 should like to know, if, taking this old Declaration 
 of Independence, which declares that all men are 
 equal upon principle and making exceptions to it, 
 where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean 
 a negro, why not another say it does not mean 
 some other man? If that Declaration is not the 
 truth, let us get the statute book in which we find it, 
 and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! If it 
 is not true let us tear it out. (Cries of No, No.) Let 
 us stick to it then, let us stand firmly by it, then! 
 * * * Let us discard all this quibbling about 
 this man or the other man, this race and that race, 
 and the other race being inferior and therefore they 
 must be placed in an inferior position — discarding 
 our standard that we have left us! Let us discard 
 all these things and unite as one people throughout 
 this land until we shall once more stand up declar- 
 ing that all men are created equal. * * * j 
 leave you hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn 
 in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a 
 doubt that all men are created equal. 
 
 10 
 
 (July 17, 1858, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Debates, p. 63.) 
 
 I have said that I do not understand the Declara- 
 tion to mean that all men were created equal in all 
 
Meaning and Purpose 21 
 
 respects. They are not our equal in color; but I 
 suppose that it does mean to declare that all men are 
 equal in their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit 
 of happiness." Certainly the negro is not our equal 
 in color — perhaps not in many other respects — 
 still in the right to put into his mouth the bread 
 that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of 
 every other man, white or black. In pointing out 
 that more has been given you, you cannot be justi- 
 fied in taking away the little which has been given 
 bim. All I ask for the negro is that if you do not 
 like him^ let him alone. If God gave him but little, 
 that little let him enjoy. 
 
 II 
 
 (July 4, 1861, Message.— Pen and Voice, Van Buren, p. 91; Speak- 
 ing of tlie ConfeSerate Constitution.) 
 
 Our adversaries have adopted some declaration of 
 independence, in which, unlike the good old one 
 penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "All men 
 are created equal." Why? They have adopted a 
 temporary national constitution, in the preamble of 
 which, unlike our good old one signed by Washing- 
 ton, they omit "We the people" and substitute "We 
 the deputies of the sovereign and independent 
 States." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of 
 view the rights of men and the authority of the 
 people? This is essentially a people's contest. On 
 
22 " Declaration of Independence 
 
 the side of the Union, it is a struggle for main- 
 taining in the world that form and subatance of 
 government whose leading object is to elevate the 
 condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all 
 shoulders ; to clear the paths of laudable pursuits to 
 all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance 
 in the race of life. Yielding to partial and tempo- 
 rary departures, from necessity, this is the leading 
 object of the government for whose existence we 
 contend and I am most happy to believe that the 
 plain people understand and appreciate this. 
 
 12 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Debates, p. 23.) 
 
 It is said in one of the admonitions of our Lord, 
 "As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also 
 perfect." The Saviour, I suppose, did not expect 
 that any human creature could be perfect as the 
 Father in Heaven ; but he said, "As your Father in 
 Heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect." He set rhat 
 up as a standard, and he who did most toward 
 reaching that standard, attained the highest degree 
 of moral perfection. So I say in relation to the prin- 
 ciple that all men are created equal, let it be as 
 nearly reached as we can. If we cannot give free- 
 dom to every creature, let us do nothing that will 
 impose slavery upon any other creature. Let us, 
 then, turn this government back into the channel 
 
Meaning and Purpose 23 
 
 in which the framers of the constitution originally 
 placed it. 
 
 13 
 
 (August 24, 1858, Letter to Mr. Speed— Hanaford, p. 226.) 
 
 Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be 
 pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring 
 that "All men are created equal." We now, prac- 
 tically, read it, "All men are created equal except 
 negroes." When the know-nothings get control it 
 will read: "All men are created equal except ne- 
 groes, and foreigners and Catholics." When it 
 comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some 
 country where they make no pretense of loving 
 liberty, — to Russia, for instance, where despotism 
 can be taken pure and without the base alloy of 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 14 
 
 (June 26, 1857, Speech at Springfield, in.— Raymond, p. 48.) 
 
 In those days our Declaration of Independence 
 was held sacred by all, and thought to include all ; 
 but now to aid in making the bondage of the negro 
 universal and eternal it is assailed and sneered at 
 and construed and hawked at and torn, till, if its 
 framers could rise from their graves, they could not 
 at all recognize it. 
 
24 Declaration of Independence 
 
 13 
 
 (December 10, 1856, Speech at banquet in Chicago, lU.— Complete 
 Works, Vol. I, p. 226.) 
 
 Thus let bygones be bygones, let past differences 
 as nothing be and with steady eye on the real issue 
 let us reinaugurate the good old "central ideas" of 
 the republic. We can do it. The human heart is 
 with us! God is with us! We shall again be able 
 not to declare that "all States as States are equal," 
 nor yet that all "citizens as citizens are equal," but 
 to renew the broader, better declaration, including 
 both these and much more, that all men are created 
 equal ! 
 
 16 
 
 (October 16, 1854, Speech at Peoria, 111.— Howells, p. 294.) 
 
 Let US readopt the Declaration of Independence, 
 and with it the practices and policy which harmon- 
 ize with it. Let North and South — ^let all Americans 
 — let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the 
 great and good work. If we do this, we shall not 
 only save the Union, but we shall have so saved 
 it as to make and keep it forever worthy of the 
 saving. We shall have so saved it that the suc- 
 ceeding miUions of free, happy people, the world 
 over, shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest 
 generations. 
 
Meaning and Purpose 
 
 17 
 
 (August 15, 1855, Letter to George Robertson— Complete Worka, 
 Vol. I. p. 216.) 
 
 When we were the poUtical 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! 
 
 18 
 
 (February 21, 1861, Speech at Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 —Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 690.) 
 
 Your worthy Mayor has expressed the wish, in 
 which I join with him, that it were convenient for 
 me to remain in your city long enough to consult 
 your merchants and manufacturers; or, as it were 
 to Usten to those breathings rising within the con- 
 secrated walls wherein the Constitution of the 
 United States, and I will add, the Declaration of 
 Independence, were originally framed and adopted. 
 I assure you and your Mayor that I had hoped on 
 this occasion, and upon all occasions during my 
 life, that I shall do nothing inconsistent with the 
 teachings of these holy and most sacred walls. I 
 have never asked anything that does not breathe 
 
26 Declaration of Indepemdence 
 
 from these walls. All my political warfare has 
 been in favor of the teachings that came forth from 
 these sacred walls. May my right hand forget its 
 cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
 mouth if ever I prove false to those teachings. 
 
 19 
 
 (October 16, 1864, Speech at Peoria, 111.— Howells, p. 292. By the 
 phrase "Nebraska men" Mr. Lincoln meant supporters of the 
 Nebraska Bill.) 
 
 Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the 
 grave, we have been giving up the old for the new 
 faith. Near eighty years ago we begari by declaring 
 that all men are created equal; but, now, from that 
 beginning we have run down to the other declara- 
 tion that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred 
 right of self-government." These principles cannot 
 stand together. They are as opposite as God and 
 Mammc5n; and whoever holds to the one must de- 
 spise the other. When Pettit, in connection with 
 his support of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declara- 
 tion of Independence "a self-evident lie" he only did 
 what consistency and candoi; required all other 
 Nebraska men to do. Of the forty odd Nebraska 
 Senators who sat present and heard him, no one 
 rebuked him. Nor am I apprised that any Ne- 
 braska newspaper or any Nebraska orator in the 
 whole nation has ever yet rebuked him. If this 
 had been said among Marion's men. Southerners 
 
Meaning Mid Purpose 27 
 
 though they were, what would have become of 
 the man who said it? If this had been said to 
 the men who captured Andre, the man who said 
 it would probably have been hung sooner than 
 Andre was. If it had been said in old Independ- 
 ence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the very door- 
 keeper would have throttled the man and thrust 
 him into the street. 
 
LIBERTY. 
 20 
 
 (March i, 1865, Second Inaugural Address— The Man of the 
 People, Hapgood, p. 404.) 
 
 Neither party expected for the war the magnitude 
 or the duration which it has already attained. 
 Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict 
 might cease with, or even before, the conflict, itself, 
 should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, 
 and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both 
 read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and 
 each invokes His aid against the other. It may 
 seem strange that any men should dare to ask a 
 just God's assistance in wringing their bread from 
 the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, 
 that we be not judged. The prayers of both could 
 not be answered — that of neither has been answered 
 fully. 
 
 The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe 
 unto the world because of offenses; for it must 
 needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by 
 whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose 
 that American slavery is one of those offenses 
 which, in the providence of God, must needs come, 
 but which having continued through His appointed 
 
 29 
 
30 Liberty 
 
 time, He now wills to remove and that He gives to 
 both North and South this terrible war as the woe 
 due to those by whom the offense came, shall we dis- 
 cern therein any departure from those divine at- 
 tributes which the believers in a living God always 
 ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope — fervently do 
 we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may 
 speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it con- 
 tinue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 
 two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall 
 be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with 
 the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the 
 sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still 
 it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are 
 true and righteous altogether!" 
 
 With malice toward none, with charity for all, 
 with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see 
 the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are 
 in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him 
 who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
 and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and 
 cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves 
 and with all nations. 
 
 21 
 
 (January 27, 1837, Speech at Springfield, ni.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 14. Speaking of the Reyolution.) 
 
 At the close of that struggle nearly every adult 
 male had been a participator in some of its scenes. 
 
Liberty ^i 
 
 The consequence was that of those scenes in the 
 form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother, a 
 living history was to be found in every family — a 
 history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its 
 own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars 
 of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes 
 related — a history, too, that could be read and 
 understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, 
 the learned and the unlearned. But those histories 
 are gone. They can be read no more forever. They 
 were a fortress of strength; but what invading foe- 
 man could never do, the silent artillery of time has 
 done — the levelling of its walls. They are gone. 
 They were a forest of giant oaks ; but the all-restless 
 hurricane has swept over them and left only here 
 and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, 
 shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to 
 murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to com- 
 bat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder 
 storms, then to sink and be no more! 
 
 22 
 
 (September 11, 1858, Speech, reported in Chicago Daily Press and 
 Tribune, September 16, 1858.) 
 
 And when by all these means 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 ex- 
 tinguished his soul and placed him where the ray 
 
32 Liberty 
 
 of hope is blown out in the darkness that broods 
 over the spirits of the damned, are you quite sure 
 the demon you have roused will not turn and rend 
 you? What constitutes the bulwark of our own 
 liberty and independence? It is not our frowning 
 battlements, our bristling seacoasts, the guns of 
 our war steamers or the strength of our gallant and 
 disciplined army. These are not our reliance 
 against a resumption of tyranny in our fair land. 
 All of them may be turned against our liberties 
 without making us stronger or weaker for the 
 struggle. Our reliance is in the love of liberty 
 which God has planted in our bosom^s. Our de- 
 fense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes 
 liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands every- 
 where. Destroy this spirit and you have planted 
 the seeds of despotism around your own doors. 
 Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage 
 and you are preparing your own limbs to wear 
 them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of 
 those around you, you have lost the genius of your 
 own independence and become the fit subjects of 
 the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. 
 And, let me tell you, all these things are prepared 
 for you, with the sure logic of history, if the elec- 
 tions shall promise that the next Dred Scott de- 
 cision and all future decisions will be quietly ac- 
 quiesced in by the people! 
 
Liberty ,, 
 
 23 
 
 (January 27, 1837, Speech at Sprlngfleld, 111.— Hapgood, p. 60.) 
 
 At what point shall we expect, the approach of 
 danger? By what means shall we fortify against 
 it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military 
 giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? 
 Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa 
 combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our 
 own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bona- 
 parte for a commander, could not by force take a 
 drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue 
 Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. 
 
 At what point then is the approach of danger 
 to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must 
 spring up among us; it cannot come from abroad. 
 If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its 
 author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we 
 •must live through all time, or die by suicide! 
 
 24 
 
 (January 27, U37, Speecb at Sprlngfleld, III.— Coffin, pi 97.) 
 
 We find ourselves in peaceful possession of the 
 fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of 
 territory, fertility of soil and salubrity of climate. 
 We find ourselves under the government of a 
 system of political institutions conducing more 
 essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty 
 
34 Liberty 
 
 than any of which the history of former times tells 
 us. We find ourselves the legal inheritors of these 
 fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the ac- 
 quirement or establishment of them, they are a 
 legacy bequeathed to us by a once hardy, brave 
 and patriotic^ but now lamented and departed, race 
 of ancestors. Theirs was the task (and nobly they 
 performed it) to possess themselves, and through 
 themselves us, of this goodly land,- and to uprear 
 upon its hills and in its valleys a political edifice of 
 liberty and equal rights. It is ours, only, to trans- 
 mit these — the former unprofaned by the foot of an 
 invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time 
 and untorn by usurpation — to the latest generation 
 that fate shall permit the world to know. This task, 
 gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty 
 to posterity and love for our species, in general, all 
 imperatively require us faithfully to perform. 
 
 25 
 
 (January 27, 1837, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I. p. 13.) 
 
 Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified 
 for any task they should undertake, may ever be 
 found whose ambition would aspire to nothing be- 
 yond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presi- 
 dential chair; but such belong not to the family of 
 the lion, or the tribe of the eagile. What! Think 
 
Liberty 35 
 
 you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a 
 Caesar, or a Napoleon? Never! 
 
 Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks 
 regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction 
 in adding story to story upon the monuments of 
 fame erected to the memory of others. It denies 
 that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It 
 scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor 
 however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinc- 
 tion ; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the 
 expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving free 
 men. Is it unreasonable then to expect that some 
 man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with 
 ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, 
 will at some time spring up among us? And when 
 such an one does, it will require the people to be 
 united with each other, attached to the government 
 and laws and generally intelligent to successfully 
 frustrate his designs. 
 
 26 
 
 (July 1, 1854, Fragment— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 179.) 
 
 If A can prove, however conclusively, that he 
 may, of right, enslave B, why may not B snatch 
 the same argument and prove equally that he may 
 enslave A? You say A is white and B is black. It 
 is color, then — the lighter having the right to en- 
 slave the darker? Take care! By this rule you are 
 
36 Liberty 
 
 to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer 
 skin than your own. You do not mean color ex- 
 actly? You mean the whites are intellectually the 
 superiors of the blacks, and, therefore, have the 
 right to enslave them? Take care, again! By this 
 rule you are to be slave to the first man you meet 
 with an intellect superior to your own. But, say 
 you, it is a question of interest; and, if you make 
 it your interest, you have the right to enslave an- 
 other. Very well! And, if he can make it his in- 
 terest, he has the right to enslave you! 
 27 
 
 (February U, 1861, Speeoli at Indianapolis, IniJ.— Van Buren, p. 19.) 
 
 I will only say that to the salvation of the Union 
 there needs but one single thing, the hearts of a 
 people like yours. When the people rise in mass in 
 behalf of the Union and the liberties of this country, 
 truly may it be said, "The gates of hell cannot pre- 
 vail against them." In all trying positions in which 
 I shall be placed, and doubtless I shall be placed in 
 many such, my reliance will be upon you and the 
 people of the United States; and I wish you to re- 
 member, now and forever, that it is your business, 
 and not mine; that if the Union of these States and, 
 the liberties of this people shall be lost, it is but little 
 to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great 
 deal to the thirty miHions of people who inhabit 
 
Liberty 37 
 
 these United States, and to their posterity in all 
 coming time. It is your business to rise up and 
 preserve the Union and liberty for yourselves, and 
 not for me. I appeal to you again to constantly 
 bear in mind that not with politicians, not with 
 presidents, not with office-seekers, but with you, is 
 the question : Shall the Union and shall the liberties 
 of this country be preserved to the latest genera- 
 tions? 
 
 28 
 
 (November 19, 1858, Letter to H. Asbury— Herndon, p. 414.) 
 
 The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty 
 must not be surrendered at the end of one or even 
 one hundred defeats. 
 
 29 
 
 (April 4, 1864, Letter to A. G. Hodges— Lite by Barrett, p. 480.) 
 
 I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not 
 wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when 
 I did not so think and feel. 
 
 30 
 
 (October 16, 1854, Speech at Peoria, III.— Howells, p. 286.) 
 
 Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's 
 nature — opposition to it in his love of justice. These 
 principles are an eternal antagonism. * * * 
 Repeal the Missouri Compromise — repeal all com- 
 promises — repeal the Declaration of Independence 
 
38 Liberty 
 
 — repeal all past history — you still cannot repeal 
 human nature. It still will be the abundance of 
 man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and 
 out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will 
 continue to speak. 
 
 31 
 
 (August 21, 1858, Speecb at Ottawa, 111.— Debates, p. 74.) 
 
 This declared indifference, but, as I must think, 
 covert zeal^ for the spread of slavery, I cannot but 
 hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice 
 of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our 
 Republican example of its just influence in the 
 world, enables the enemies of free institutions, with 
 plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real 
 friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and es- 
 pecially because it forces so many good men among 
 ourselves into an open war with the very funda- 
 mental principles of civil liberty, criticising the 
 Declaration of Independence and insisting that 
 there is no right principle of action but self-interest. 
 32 
 
 (October 16, 1854, Speech at Peoria, ni.— Howells, p. 293.) 
 
 Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding 
 the earliest practice and first precept of our ancient 
 faith? In our greedy chase to make profit of the 
 negro, let us beware lest we "cancel and tear in 
 pieces" even the white man's charter of freedom. 
 
Liberty 3g 
 
 33 
 
 (November 19, 1858, Letter to Dr. Henry— Herndon, p. 414.) 
 
 I am glad that I made the late race. It gave me 
 a hearing on the great and durable questions of the 
 age which I could have had in no other way; and 
 though I now sink out of view and shall be forgot- 
 ten, I believe I have made some marks which will 
 tell for the cause of liberty long after I am gone. 
 
 34 
 
 (March 17, 1866, Speech to an Indiana Regiment— Hapgood, p. 386.] 
 
 I have always thought that all men should be 
 free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first 
 those who desire it for themselves, and secondly 
 those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear 
 any one arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse 
 to see it tried on him personally. 
 
 35 
 
 (November 21, 1864, Letter to Mrs. Blxby— Van Buren, p. 392.) 
 
 Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of 
 the War Department a statement of the Adjutant- 
 General of Massachusetts that you are the mother 
 of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of 
 battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any 
 words of mine which should attempt to beguile you 
 from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I 
 
40 Liberty 
 
 cannot refrain from tendering to you the consola- 
 tion that may be found in the thanks of the RepubHc 
 they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father 
 may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and 
 leave you only the cherished memory of the loved 
 and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to 
 have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of free- 
 dom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 36 
 
 (December 20, 1839, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Hanaford, p. 62.) 
 
 Many free countries have lost their liberties, and 
 ours may lose hers; but if she shall, may it be my 
 proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert 
 her, but that I never deserted her! * * * 'Yhs. 
 probability that we may fall in the struggle ought 
 not to deter us from the support of a cause that we 
 deem to be just. It shall not deter me. * * * 
 Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may 
 succeed. But if after all we shall fail, be it so. We 
 shall have the proud consolation of saying to our 
 conscience, and to the departed shade of our coun- 
 try's freedom, that the course approved by our 
 judgments and adored by our hearts, in disaster, in 
 chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in de- 
 fending. 
 
Liberty 41 
 
 37 
 
 (February 22, 1842, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 63.) 
 
 This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary 
 of the birthday of Washington ; we are met to cele- 
 brate this day. Washington is the mightiest name 
 of earth — long since mightiest in the cause of civil 
 liberty, still mightiest in moral reformation. On 
 that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To 
 add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of 
 Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt 
 it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its 
 naked deathless splendor leave it shining on. 
 
GOVERNMENT AND THE PEOPLE. 
 38 
 
 (July 16, 1852, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Wcrks, Vol. 
 I, p. 171.) 
 
 A free people in times of peace and quiet — when 
 pressed by no common danger — naturally divide ^ 
 into parties. At such times the man who is of 
 neither party is not, cannot be of any consequence. 
 
 39 
 
 (December 3, 1864, Interview— Hapgood, p. 385.) 
 
 You say your husband is a religious man; tell 
 him when you meet him that I say I am not much 
 of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the 
 religion that sets men to rebel and fight against 
 their government, because, as they think, that gov- 
 ernment does not sufficiently help some men to eat 
 their bread in the sweat of other men's faces, is not 
 the sort of religion upon which people can get to 
 heaven. 
 
 40 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Raymond, p. 168.) 
 
 The chief magistrate derives all his authority from 
 the people, and they have conferred none upon him 
 to fix terjns for the separation of the States. The 
 
 43 
 
44 Government and the People 
 
 people themselves can do this also if they choose; 
 but the executive, as such, has nothing to do with 
 it. His duty is to administer the present govern- 
 ment as it came to his hands and to transmit it un- 
 impaired by him to his successor. 
 
 41 
 
 (August 26, 1863, Letter to James O. Conkling— Herndon, p. 552.) 
 
 I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the 
 people, according to the bond of service — the 
 United States Constitution — and that, as such, I am 
 responsible to them. 
 
 42 
 
 (June 17, 1858, Speech at Springfield, III.— Debates, p. 1.) 
 
 "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I 
 believe this government cannot endure permanently 
 half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union 
 to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall 
 — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
 become all one thing or the other. 
 
 43 
 
 (December 10, 1856, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, p. 225.) 
 
 Our government rests in public opinion. Who- 
 ever can change public opinion can change the gov- 
 ernment, practically, just so much. Public opinion, 
 on any subject, always has a "central idea" from 
 which all its minor thoughts radiate. That "central 
 
Government and the People. 45 
 
 idea" in our political public opinion at the begin- 
 ning has been, and until recently has continued to 
 be, the equality of men. 
 
 44 
 
 (March 5, 1S60, Speech at Hartlord, Conn.— Complete Worka, Vol. 
 I, p. 613.) 
 
 Public opinion settles every question here. Any 
 policy to be permanent must have public opinion 
 at the bottom — something in accordance with the 
 philosophy of the human mind as it is. The prop- 
 erty basis will have its weight. The love of prop- 
 erty and a consciousness of right and wrong have 
 conflicting places in our organization, which often 
 make a man's course seem crooked, his conduct a 
 riddle. 
 
 45 
 
 (February 9, 1865, Reply to Committee of Congress reporting re- 
 sult of Electoral Count— CofSn, p. 487.) 
 
 With deep gratitude to my countrymen for this 
 mark of their confidence ; with distrust of my own 
 ability to perform the duty required under the most 
 favorable circumstances, and now rendered doubly 
 difficult by exciting national perils ; yet with a firm 
 reliance on the strength of our free government 
 and the eventual loyalty of the people to the just 
 principles upon which it is founded, and above all 
 with an unshaken faith in the Supreme Ruler of 
 nations, I accept the trust. 
 
46 Government and the People 
 
 46 
 
 (December 6, 1864, Annual Message— Raymond, p. 633.) 
 
 In a great national crisis like ours, unanimity of 
 action among those seeking a common end is very 
 desirable — almost indispensable; and yet no ap- 
 proach to such unanimity is attainable unless some 
 deference shall be paid to the will of the majority, 
 simply because it is the will of the majority. 
 
 47 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Raymond, p. 167.) 
 
 A majority held in restraint by constitutional 
 checks and limitations, and always changing easily, 
 with deliberate changes of popular opinions and 
 sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free peo- 
 ple. * * * The rule of a minority as a perma- 
 nent arrangement is wholly inadmissible; so that 
 rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despot- 
 ism in some form is all that is left. 
 
 48 
 
 (February 14, 1861, Speecb at Steubenville, Ohio— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 677.) 
 
 If the majority should not rule^ who would be the 
 judge? Where is such a judge to be found? We 
 should all be bound by the majority of the Ameri- 
 can people; if not, then the minority must control. 
 Would that be right? Would it be just or gener- 
 
Government and the People 47 
 
 ous? Assuredly not. I reiterate that the majority 
 should rule. If I adopt a wrong policy, the oppor- 
 tunity for condemnation will occur in four years' 
 time. Then I can be turned out, and a better man 
 with better views put in my place. 
 
 49 
 
 (September 30, 1859, Speech at Milwaukee, Wis.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I. p. 577.) 
 
 Farmers being the most numerous class, it fol- 
 lows that their interest is the largest interest. It 
 also follows that that interest is most worthy of all 
 to be cherished and cultivated — that if there be in- 
 evitable conflict between that interest and any other, 
 that other should yield. 
 
 50 
 
 (May 17, 1859, Letter to Dr. Theodore Canlsius concernlDg law of 
 naturalization, etc.— Howells, p. 85.) 
 
 As I understand the spirit of our institutions, it 
 is designed to promote the elevation of men. I am 
 therefore hostile to anything that tends to their 
 debasement. It is well known that I deplore the 
 oppressed condition of the blacks, and it would, 
 therefore, be very inconsistent for me to look with 
 approval upon any measure that infringes upon the 
 inalienable rights of white men whether or not they 
 are born in another land or speak a diiiferent lan- 
 guage from our own. In respect to a fusion, I am 
 in favor of it whenever it can be effected on Re- 
 
48 Government and the People 
 
 publican principles; but upon no other condition. 
 A fusion upon any other platform would be as in- 
 sane as unprincipled. It would thereby lose the 
 whole North while the common enemy would still 
 have the support of the South. The question in 
 relation to men is different. There are good and 
 patriotic men and able statesmen in the South whom 
 I would willingly support if they would place them- 
 selves on Republican ground; but I shall oppose 
 the lowering of the Republican standard even by a 
 hair's breadth. 
 
 51 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Debates, p. 19.) 
 
 I have said many times * * * that no man 
 believed more than I in the principle of self-govern- 
 ment; that it lies at the bottom of all my ideas of just 
 government from beginning to end. * * * I 
 deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in 
 his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have 
 done in efficiency in advocating it. 
 
 52 
 
 (October 16, 1854, Speech at Peoria, 111.— Howells, p. 279.) 
 
 Well I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are 
 and will continue to be as good as the average of 
 people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary. What 
 I do say is that no man is good enough to govern 
 
Government and the People 49 
 
 another man without that other's consent. I say 
 this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of 
 American Republicanism. Our Declaration of In- 
 dependence says: "We hold these truths to be self- 
 evident: That all men are created equal; that they 
 are endowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
 able rights; that among these are life, liberty and 
 the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights 
 governments are instituted among men, deriving 
 their just powers from the consent of the governed." 
 I have quoted so much at this time merely to show 
 that according to our ancient faith, the just powers 
 of governments are derived from the consent of the 
 governed. Now the relation of master and slave is 
 pro tanto a total violation of this principle. The 
 master not only governs the slave without his con- 
 sent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether 
 different from those which he prescribes for himself. 
 Allow all the governed an equal voice in the gov- 
 ernment, and that, and that only, is self-government. 
 
 53 
 
 (October 4, 1854, Speech at SpringSeld, III.— Raymond, p. 44.) 
 
 My distinguished friend says it is an insult to the 
 emigrants of Kansas and Nebraska to suppose that 
 they are not able to govern themselves. We must 
 not slur over an argument of this kind because it 
 happens to tickle the ear. It must be met and an- 
 
^/\ 
 
 5o Government and the People 
 
 swered. I admit that the emigrant to Kansas and 
 Nebraska is competent to govern himself, but I 
 deny his right to govern any other person without 
 that person's consent. 
 
 54 
 
 (October 1, 1854, Speech, at Springfield, Ill.—Coffln, p. U5.) 
 
 No man is good enough to govern another man 
 without that other's consent. When the white man 
 governs himself that is self-government ; but when 
 he governs himself and also governs another man — 
 then that is more than self-government — that is des- 
 potism. Our reliance is in the love of liberty which 
 God has planted in us; our defense is in the spirit 
 which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all 
 lands, everywhere. Those who deny freedom to 
 others deserve it not for themselves, and under a 
 just God cannot long retain it. 
 
 55 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speecli at Chicago, 111.— Debates, p. 19.) 
 
 I beheve each individual is naturally entitled to 
 do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his 
 labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any 
 other man's rights ; that each community, as a State, 
 has a right to do exactly as it pleases with albthe 
 concerns within that State that interfere with the 
 right of no other State; and that the general gov- 
 
Government and the People 5 1 
 
 ernment, upon principle, has no right to interfere 
 with anything other than that general class of things 
 that does concern the whole. 
 
 56 
 
 (October 1, 1858, Notes for Speeches— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 
 425.) 
 
 Well, I too believe in self-government as I under- 
 stand it; but I do not understand that the privilege 
 one man takes of making a slave of another, or hold- 
 ing him as such, is any part of "self-government." 
 To call it so is, to my mind, simply absurd and ridic- 
 ulous. I am for the people of the whole nation doing 
 just as they please in all matters which concern the 
 whole nation; for those of each part doing just as 
 they choose in all matters which concern no other 
 part, and for each individual doing just as he 
 chooses in all matters which concern nobody else. 
 This is the principle. 
 
 57 
 
 (July 1, 1854, Fragment— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 178.) 
 
 Most governments have been based, practically, 
 on the denial of the equal rights of men. Ours be- 
 gan by affirming those rights. They said, "some 
 men are too ignorant and vicious to share in gov- 
 ernment." "Possibly so," said we, "and by your 
 system you would always keep them ignorant and 
 vicious. We propose to give all a chance; and we 
 
52 Government and the People 
 
 expect the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant 
 wiser and all'! better and happier together." 
 
 58 
 
 (October 16, 1854, Speech at Peoria, 111.— Howells, p. 284.) 
 
 Finally I insist that if there is anything that is 
 the duty of the whole people to never intrust to 
 hands but their own that thing is the preservation 
 and perpetuity of their own liberties and institu- 
 tions. 
 
 59 
 
 (September 16, 1859, Speech at Columbus, O.— Debates, p. 242.) 
 
 I think a definition of genuine popular sovereign- 
 ty, in the abstract, would be about this: That each 
 man shall' do precisely as he pleases with himself 
 and with all those things which exclusively concern 
 him. Applied to government, this principle would 
 be, that a general government shall do all those 
 things which pertain to it, and all the local govern- 
 ments shall do precisely as they please in respect to 
 those matters which exclusively concern them. I 
 understand that this government of the United 
 States, under which we live, is based upon this prin- 
 ciple; and I am misunderstood if it is supposed that 
 I have any war to make upon that principle. 
 
Government and the People 53 
 
 60 
 
 (August 21, 1858, Speech at Ottawa, 111.— Debates, p. 76.) 
 
 The great variety of the local institutions in the 
 States, springing from differences in the soil, differ- 
 ences in the face of the country, and in the climate, 
 are bonds of union. They do not make "a house 
 divided against itself," but they make a house 
 united. If they produce in one section of the coun- 
 try what is called for by the wants of another sec- 
 tion, and this other section can supply the wants of 
 the first, they are not matters of discord but bonds 
 of union, true bonds of union. 
 
 61 
 
 (July 5, 1861, Annual Message— Raymond, p. 186.) 
 
 This relative matter of National power and State 
 rights, as a principle, is no other than the principle 
 of generality and locality. Whatever concerns the 
 whole should be confided to the whole — to the 
 general government; while whatever concerns only 
 the State should be left exclusively to the State. 
 
 62 
 
 (July 1, 1854, Fragment— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 180.) 
 
 The legitimate object of government is to do for 
 a community of people whatever they need to have 
 done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for 
 themselves, in their separate and individual capaci- 
 
54 ' Government and the People 
 
 ties. In all that the people can individually do as 
 well for themselves, government ought not to in- 
 terfere. The desirable things which the individuals 
 of a people cannot do, or cannot well do for them- 
 selves fall into two classes: those which have rela- 
 tion to wrongs, and those which have not. Each 
 of those branch off into an infinite variety of sub- 
 divisions. 
 
 The first — that in relation to wrongs — embraces 
 all crimes, misdemeanors, and nonperformance of 
 contracts. The other embraces all which, in its 
 nature, and without wrong, requires combined ac- 
 tion, as public roads and highways, public schools, 
 charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the de- 
 ceased and the machinery of government itself. 
 
 From this it appears that if all men were just^ 
 there still would be some, though not so much, need 
 of government. 
 
 63 
 
 (February 11, 1S61, Speech at Indianapolis, Ind.— Hanatord, p. 68.) 
 
 By the way, in what consists the special sacred- 
 ness of a State? I speak not of the position as- 
 signed to a State in the Union by the Constitution, 
 for that by the bond we all recognize. That posi- 
 tion, however, a State cannot carry out of the Union 
 with it. I speak of that assumed primary right of 
 a State to rule all which is less than itself and ruin 
 
Government and the People 55 
 
 all that which is larger than itself. If a State and 
 a county, in a given case, should be equal in extent 
 of territory, and equal in number of inhabitants, in 
 what, as a matter of principle, is the State better 
 than the county? Would an exchange of names be 
 an exchange of rights upon principle? On what 
 rightful principle may a State, being not more than 
 one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, 
 break up the nation and then coerce a proportion- 
 ally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbi- 
 trary way? What mysterious right to play tyrant is 
 conferred on a district of country with its people by 
 merely calling it a State? 
 
 64 
 
 (July 6, 1861, First Annual Message— RaTmond, p. 194.) 
 
 The States have their status in the Union, and 
 they have no other legal status. If they break from 
 this they can only do so against law and by revolu- 
 tion. The Union, and not themselves separately, pro- 
 cured their independence and their liberty. By con- 
 quest or purchase the Union gave each of them 
 whatever of independence or liberty it has. The 
 Union is older than any of the States, and in fact it 
 created them as States. Originally some dependent 
 colonies made the Union, and in turn the Union 
 threw off their old dependence for them and made 
 them States such as they are. Not one of them ever 
 had a State Constitution independent of the Union. 
 
56 Govermnent and the People 
 
 65 
 
 (July 5, 1861, First Annual Message— Haymond, p. 196. 
 
 It may be affirmed, without extravagance, that the 
 free institutions we enjoy have developed the pow- 
 ers and improved the condition of our whole people 
 beyond any example in the world. Of this we now 
 have a striking and an impressive illustration. So 
 large an army as the government has now on foot 
 was never before known without a soldier in it but 
 who had taken his place there of his own free choice. 
 But more than this, there are many single regiments 
 whose members, one and another, possess full prac- 
 tical knowledge of all the arts and sciences, pro- 
 fessions and whatever else, whether useful or ele- 
 gant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely 
 one from which there could not be selected a presi- 
 dent, a cabinet, a congress and perhaps a court 
 abundantly competent to administer the govern- 
 ment itself. 
 
 66 
 
 (December 3, 1861, Annual Message— Van Buren, p. 120.) 
 
 From the first taking of our national census to 
 the last are seventy years, and we find our popula- 
 tion at the end of the period eight times as great 
 as it was at the beginning. The increase of those 
 other things that men deem desirable has been even 
 greater. We thus have at one view what the popu- 
 
Government and the People 57 
 
 lar principles applied to government through the 
 machinery of the States and the Union has produced 
 in a given time and what if firmly maintained it 
 promises for the future. There are already among 
 us those who, if the Union be preserved, will live 
 to see it contain two hundred and fifty millions. 
 
 The struggle of to-day is not altogether for to- 
 day — it is for the vast future also. With a reliance 
 on Providence all the more firm and earnest let us 
 proceed in the great task which events have de- 
 volved upon us. 
 
 67 
 
 (April 6, 1859, Letter in reply to H. L. Pierce and other Repub- 
 licans of Boston inviting Mr. Lincoln to attend a celebration 
 of Jefferson's birthday— The Republic, Irelan, Vol. XVI, p. 
 263.) 
 
 Gentlemen : Your kind note inviting me to attend 
 a festival in Boston, on the 28th instant, in honor 
 of the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, was duly re- 
 ceived. My engagements are such that I cannot 
 attend. 
 
 Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two 
 great political parties were first formed in this coun- 
 try, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of 
 them and Boston the headquarters of the other, it 
 is both curious and interesting that those supposed 
 to descend politically from the party opposed to 
 Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in 
 
58 Government and the People 
 
 their own original seat of empire, while those claim- 
 ing political descent from him have nearly ceased to 
 breathe his name everywhere. 
 
 Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party was 
 formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the 
 personal rights of men, holding the rights of prop- 
 erty to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and 
 assuming that the so-called Democracy of to-day 
 are the Jefiferson, and their opponents the anti-Jef- 
 ferson party, it will be equally interesting to note 
 how completely the two have changed hands as to 
 the principle upon which they were originally sup- 
 posed to be divided. The Democracy of to-day 
 hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing 
 when in conflict with another man's right of prop- 
 erty. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both 
 the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the 
 man before the dollar. 
 
 I remember being once much amused at seeing 
 two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with 
 their great-coats on, which fight, after a long and 
 rather harmless contest, ended in each having 
 fought himself out of his own coat and into that 
 of the other. If the two leadmg parties of this day 
 are really identical with the two in the days of 
 Jefiferson and Adams, they have performed the same 
 feat as the two drunken men. 
 
 But soberly, it is now no child's play to save the 
 
Government and ike People 59 
 
 principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this 
 nation. One would state with great confidence that 
 he could convince any sane child that the simpler 
 propositions of Euclid are true; but nevertheless 
 he would fail utterly with one who should deny the 
 definitions and axioms. 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-evi- 
 dent lies." And others insidiously argue that they 
 apply to "superior races." These expressions, dif- 
 fering in form, are identical in object and effect — 
 the supplanting the principles of free government, 
 and restoring those of classification, caste^ and legit- 
 imacy. They would delight a convocation of 
 crowned heads plotting against the people. They 
 are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of re- 
 turning despotism. We must repulse them, or they 
 will subjugate us. This is a world of compensation, 
 and he who would be no slave must consent to have 
 no slave. Those who deny freedom to others de- 
 serve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, 
 cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson — to 
 the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle 
 for national independence by a single people, had 
 the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into 
 a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, 
 
6o Government and the People 
 
 applicable to all men and all times, and so to em- 
 balm it there that to-day, and in all coming days, it 
 shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very 
 harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression. 
 Your obedient servant. A. Lincoln. 
 
 68 
 
 (November 19, 1863, Address at the Dedication of the Cemetery at 
 Gettysburg— Raymond, p. 412.) 
 
 Four score and seven years ago our fathers 
 brought forth upon this continent a new nation, 
 conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the propo- 
 .sition that all men are created free and equal. 
 
 Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
 whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and 
 so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
 great battlefield of that war. We have come to 
 dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting- 
 place for those who here gave their lives that that 
 nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
 that we should do this. 
 
 But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we 
 cannot consecrate^ we cannot hallow this ground. 
 The brave men living and dead who struggled here 
 have consecrated it far above our power to add or 
 detract. The world will little note, nor long re- 
 member, what we say here, but it can never forget 
 what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, 
 to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
 
Government atid the People 6i 
 
 they who fought here have thus far so nobly ad- 
 vanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to 
 the great task remaining before us — that from these 
 honored dead we take increased devotion to that 
 cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
 devotion — that we here highly resolve that these 
 dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, 
 under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and 
 that government of the people, by the people, and 
 for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 
 
 69 
 
 (July 5, 1861, Annual Message— Barrett, p. 266.) 
 
 I- desire to preserve this government that it may 
 be administered for all, as it was administered by 
 the men who made it. On the side of the Union 
 it is a struggle to maintain in the world that form 
 and substance of government whose leading object 
 is to elevate the condition of men, lift artificial bur- 
 dens from all shoulders and clear the paths of laud- 
 able pursuits for all; to afford all an unfettered 
 start and a fair chance in the race of life. This is 
 the leading object of the government for which we 
 contend. 
 
 70 
 
 (August 22, 1864, Speech to an Ohio Regiment— Raymond, p. 607.) 
 
 I happen temporarily to occupy this big White 
 House. I am a living witness that any one of your 
 
6 2 Government and the People 
 
 children may look to come here as my father's child 
 has. 
 
 It is in order that each one of you may have 
 through this free government, which we have en- 
 joyed, an open field and a fair chance for your in- 
 dustry, enterprise and intelligence, that you all may 
 have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its 
 desirable human aspirations, it is for this the strug- 
 gle should be maintained that we may not lose our 
 birthrights. 
 
 71 
 
 (July 26, 1862, Letter to Reverdy Johnson— Complete Works, Vol. 
 II, p. 215.) 
 
 I am a patient man — always willing to forgive 
 on the Christian terms of repentance^ and also to 
 give ample time for repentance. Still I must save 
 this government, if possible. What I cannot do, of 
 course I will not do; but it may as well be under- 
 stood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this 
 game leaving any available card unplayed. 
 
 72 
 
 (August 15, 1863, Opinion of the Draft— Complete Works, Vol. II, 
 p. 391.) 
 
 Shall we shrink from the necessary means to 
 maintain our free government, which our grand- 
 fathers employed to establish it and our own fathers 
 have already employed once to maintain it? Are 
 
Government and the People 63 
 
 we degenerate? Has the manhood of our race run 
 out? 
 
 73 
 
 (June 20, 1848, Speech, House of Representatives, 111.— Howells, 
 p. 161.) 
 
 The true rule, in determining to embrace or re- 
 ject anything, is not whether it has any evil in it, 
 but whether it has more of evil than of good. There 
 are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost 
 everything, especially of government policy, is an 
 inseparable compound of the two ; so that our best 
 judgment of the preponderance between them is 
 continually demanded. 
 
 74 
 
 (May 30, 1863, Reply to Members of the General Assembly of the 
 Presbyterian Church— Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 342.) 
 
 As a pilot I have used my best exertions to keep 
 afloat our Ship of State, and shall be glad to resign 
 my trust at the appointed time to another pilot more 
 skillful and successful than I may prove. In every 
 case and at all hazards the government must be per- 
 petuated. 
 
 75 
 
 (February 18, 1861, Speech to Legislature of New York— Van Bu- 
 ren, p. 34.) 
 
 If we have patience, if we restrain ourselves, if 
 we allow ourselves not to run off in a passion, I 
 still have confidence that the Almighty, the Maker 
 
64 Government and the People 
 
 of the universe, will, through the instrumentality 
 of this great and intelligent people, bring us through 
 this as he has through all -the other difficulties of 
 our country. 
 
 76 
 
 (September 17, 1859, Speech at Cincinnati, 0.— Debates, p. 267.) 
 
 I do not mean to say that this general govern- 
 ment is charged with the duty of redressing or pre- 
 venting all the wrongs in the world; but I do think 
 that it is charged with preventing and redressing all 
 wrongs which are wrongs to itself. 
 
 77 
 
 (October 7, 1858, Speecliat Galesburg, III.— Debates, p. 179.) 
 
 I have never manifested any impatience with the 
 necessities that spring from the actual presence of 
 black people amongst us and the actual existence of 
 slavery amongst us where it does already exist, but 
 I have insisted that, in legislating for new countries 
 where it does not exist, there is no just rule other 
 than that of moral and abstract right. With refer- 
 ence to those new countries, those maxims as to the 
 right of a people to "life, liberty and the pursuit of 
 happiness" were the just rules to be constantly re- 
 ferred to. There is no misunderstanding this ex- 
 cept by men interested to misunderstand it. 
 
Government and the People 65' 
 
 78 
 
 (January 12, 1848, Speech in Congress— Barrett, p. 84.) 
 
 Any people, anywhere, being inoliined-'and having 
 the power, have the right to rise up and shake off 
 the existing government and form a new one that 
 suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most 
 sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is 
 to Hberate the world. Nor is this right confined to 
 cases in which the whole people of an existing gov- 
 ernment may choose to exercise it. Any portion of 
 such a people that can, may revolutionize and make 
 their own of so much of the territory as they in- 
 habit. More than this, a majority of any portion of 
 such a people may revolutionize putting down a 
 minority, intermingled with or near about them 
 who may oppose their movement. Such minority 
 was precisely the case of the tories of our own revo- 
 lution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by 
 old lines or old laws, but break up both and make 
 new ones. 
 
 79 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Raymond, p. 168.) 
 This country with its institutions belongs to the 
 people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow 
 weary of the existing government, they can exer- 
 cise their constitutional right of amending it or their 
 revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow it. 
 
66 Government and the People 
 
 80 
 
 (June 13, 1863, Letter to Corning— Barrett, p. 632.) 
 
 The man who stands by and says nothing when 
 the peril of his government is discussed cannot be 
 misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help 
 the enemy; much more if he talks ambiguously — 
 talks for his country with "buts and ifs and ands." 
 
 81 
 
 (July 28, 1862, Letter to Durant— Barrett, p. 569.) 
 
 I am in no boastful' mood. I shall not do more 
 than I can, but I shall do all I can to save the gov- 
 ernment, which is my sworn duty as well as my per- 
 sonal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. 
 What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing. 
 
 82 
 
 (March i, 1861, First Inaugural— Raymond, p. 168.) 
 [Speaking of amending the Constitution.] 
 
 While I make no recommendation of amend- 
 ment, I fully recognize the full authority of the peo- 
 ple over the whole subject, to be exercised in either 
 of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and 
 I should under existing circumstances favor, rather 
 than oppose, a fair opportunity being afforded the 
 people to act upon it. I will venture to add, that, 
 to me, the convention mode seems preferable, in 
 that it allows amendments to originate with the 
 
Government and the People 67 
 
 people themselves, instead of only permitting them 
 to take or reject propositions originated by others 
 not especially chosen for the purpose, and which 
 might not be precisely such as they would wish 
 either to accept or refuse. 
 
 83 
 
 (September 30, 1859, Speech at Milwaukee, Wis.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 584.) 
 
 It is said that an Eastern monarch once charged 
 his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever 
 in view, and which should be true and appropriate 
 in all times and situations. They presented him the 
 words, "And this, too, shall pass away." How much 
 it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! 
 How consoling in the depths of affliction! "And 
 this, too, shall pass away." And yet, let us hope, 
 it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by 
 the best cultivation of the physical world beneath 
 and around us, and the intellectual and moral world 
 within us, we sha:ll secure an individual, social, and 
 political prosperity and happiness, whose course 
 shall be onward and upward, and which, while the 
 earth endures, shall not pass away. 
 
THE CONSTITUTION AND THE LAW. 
 84 
 
 (February 27, 1860, Speech at Cooper Institute, New York— How- 
 ells, p. 199.) 
 
 I do not mean to say we are bound to follow im- 
 plicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would 
 be to discard all the lights of current experience — 
 to reject all progress, all improvement. What I 
 do say is that if we would supplant the opinions and 
 policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so 
 upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, 
 that even their great authority, fairly considered 
 and weighed, cannot stand. 
 
 85 
 
 (December 5, 1864, Annual Message— Barrett, p. 668.) 
 
 For myself I have no doubt of the power and 
 duty of the executive, under the law of nations, to 
 exclude enemies of the human race from an asylum 
 in the United States. 
 
 86 
 
 (September 22, 1861, Letter to O. H. Browning— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II, p. 81.) 
 
 I do not say Congress might not with propriety 
 pass a ilaw on the point, just such as General Fre- 
 
70 The Constitution and the Law 
 
 mont proclaimed. I do not say I might not, as a 
 member of Congress, vote for it. What I object to 
 is, that I, as president, shall expressly or impliedly 
 seize and exercise the permanent legislative func- 
 tions of the government. 
 
 87 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Eaymond, p. 168.) 
 
 By the frame of the government under which 
 we live, the same people have wisely given their 
 public servants but little power for mischief, and 
 have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of 
 that little to their own hands at very short intervals. 
 While the people retain their virtue and vigilance 
 no administration, by any extreme wickedness or 
 folly, can very seriously injure the government in 
 the short space of four years. 
 88 
 
 (January 27, 1837, Speeoh at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, 
 vol. I, p. 12.) 
 
 When I so pressingly urge a strict observance 
 of the laws, let me not be understood as saying there 
 are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise 
 for the redress of which no legal provisions have 
 been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I 
 do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, 
 should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while 
 they continue in force, for the sake of the example 
 they should be religiously observed. 
 
The Constitution and the Law 71 
 
 89 
 
 (July 1, 1848, Fragment— Hapgood, p. 97.) 
 
 Finally, were I President, I should desire the 
 legislation of the country to rest with Congress un- 
 influenced by the executive in its origin or progress 
 and undisturbed by the veto unless in very special 
 and clear cases. 
 
 90 
 
 (February 15, 1848, Letter to W. H. Herndon— Herndon, p. 282.) 
 
 The provision of the constitution giving the war- 
 making power to Congress was dictated as I under- 
 stand it by the following reasons: Kings had al- 
 ways 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. But 
 your view destroys the whole matter and places our 
 President where kings have always stood. 
 
 91 
 
 (August 15, 1863, Opinion on Draft Act— Complete Works, Vol. 11, 
 p. 390.) 
 
 It has been said, and I beUeve truly, that the 
 Constitution itself is not altogether such as any one 
 of its framers would have preferred. It was the 
 
72 The Constitution and the Lav) 
 
 Joint work of all, and certainly the better that it 
 was so. 
 
 92 
 
 (Marcli 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Van Buren, p. 53.) 
 
 No organic law can ever be framed with a pro- 
 vision specifically applicable to every question which 
 may occur in practical administration. No foresight 
 can anticipate, nor document of reasonable length 
 contain, express provisions for all possible ques- 
 tions. 
 
 93 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Van Buren, p. 52.) 
 
 We find the proposition that, in fegal contempla- 
 tion, the Union is perpetual confirmed by the his- 
 tory of the Union itself. The Union is much older 
 than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the 
 Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and 
 continued by the Declaration of Independence in 
 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all 
 the thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged 
 that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Con- 
 federation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787, one of the 
 declared objects for ordaining and establishing the 
 Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union." 
 
 But if the destruction of the Union by one or by 
 a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the 
 Union is less perfect than before the Constitution 
 having lost the vital element of perpetuity. 
 
The Constitution and the Law 73 
 
 94 
 
 (June 20, 1848, Speech in Congress— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 129.) 
 
 I wish now to submit a few remarks on the gen- 
 eral proposition of amending the Constitution. As 
 a general rule, I think we would much better let it 
 alone. No slight occasion should tempt us to touch 
 it. Better, rather, habituate ourselves to think of 
 it as unalterable. It can scarcely be made better 
 than it is. New provisions would introduce new 
 difficulties, and thus create and increase appetite 
 for further change. 
 
 95 
 
 (January 27, 1837, Speech at Springfield, HI.— Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, D. 12.) 
 
 Let every American, every lover of liberty, every 
 well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of 
 the Revolution never to violate in the least particu- 
 lar the 'laws of the country, and' never to tolerate 
 their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy- 
 six did to the support of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, so to the support of the Constitution and 
 laws let every American pledge his life, his property 
 and his sacred honor — let every man remember that 
 to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his 
 father, and to tear the charter of his own and his 
 children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be 
 breathed by every American mother to the lisping 
 
74 The Constitution and the Law 
 
 babe that prattles on her kp; let it be taught in 
 schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be 
 written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs; 
 let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in leg- 
 islative halls and enforced in courts of justice. And 
 in short, let it become the political religion of the 
 nation ; and let the old and the young, the rich and 
 the poor, the grave and the gay of all sexes and 
 tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceas- 
 ingly upon its altars. 
 
 96 
 
 (January 27, 1837, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, P. 9.) 
 
 I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is 
 even now something of ill omen amongst us. I 
 mean the increasing disregard for law which per- 
 vades the country — the growing disposition to sub- 
 stitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the 
 sober judgment of courts, and the worse than sav- 
 age mobs for the executive ministers of justice. 
 * * * By the operation of this mobocratic spirit, 
 which all must admit is now abroad in the land, the 
 strongest bulwark of any government, and particu- 
 larly of those constituted like ours, may effectually 
 be broken down and destroyed — I mean the attach- 
 ment of the people. Whenever this efifect shall be 
 produced among us; whenever the vicious portion 
 of population shall be permitted to gather in bands 
 
The Constitution and the Law 75 
 
 of hundreds and thousands and burn churches, rav- 
 age and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses 
 into rivers, shoot editors and hang and burn ob- 
 noxious persons at pleasure, and, with impunity, 
 depend on it, this government .cannot last. By such 
 things the feelings of the best citizens will become 
 more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be 
 Left without friends, or with too few, and those few 
 too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At 
 such a time, and under such circumstances, men of 
 sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to 
 seize the opportunity, strike thtf blow, and overturn 
 that fair fabric which for the last half century has 
 been the fondest hope of the lovers of freedom 
 throughout the world. 
 
 97 
 
 (July 27, 1848, Speech In Congress— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 137.) 
 
 That the Constitution gives the President a nega- 
 tive on legislation, all know; but that this negative 
 should be so combined with platforms and other 
 appliances as to enable him, and in fact almost 
 compel him, to take the whole of legislation into 
 his own hands is what we object to, is what General 
 Taylor objects to, and is what constitutes the broad 
 distinction between you and us. To thus transfer 
 legislation is clearly to take it from those who un- 
 derstand with minuteness the interest of the people, 
 
76 The Constitution and the Law 
 
 and give it to one who does not and cannot so well 
 understand it. 
 
 98 
 
 (July 5, 1861, First Annual Message— Bajrett, p. 266.) 
 
 - Our popular government has often been called 
 "an experiment." Two points in it our people have 
 settled: the successful establishing and successful 
 administering of it. One still remains — its suc- 
 cessful maintenance against a formidable internal 
 attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to dem- 
 onstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry 
 an election can also suppress a rebellion; that bal- 
 lots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bul- 
 lets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitu- 
 tionally decided there can be no successful appeal 
 back to bullets, that there can be no successful ap- 
 peal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elec- 
 tions. 
 
 99 
 
 (September 2, 1863, Letter to Secretary Cbase— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II. p. 402.) 
 
 Knowing your great anxiety that the Emancipa- 
 tion Proclamation shall now be applied to certain 
 parts of Virginia and Louisiana which were exempt 
 from it last January, I state briefly what appears to 
 me to be difficulties in the way of such a step. 
 
 The original proclamation has no constitutional 
 
The Constitution and the Law 77 
 
 or legal justification, except as a military measure. 
 The exemptions were made because the military 
 necessity did not apply to tlie exempted localities. 
 Nor does that necessity apply to them now any 
 more than it did then. If I take the step, must I not 
 do so without the argument of military necessity, 
 and so without any argument except the one that 
 I think the measure politically expedient and mor- 
 ally right? Would I not thus give up all'footing 
 upon Constitution or law? Would I not thus be in 
 the boundless field of absolutism? Could this pass 
 unnoticed or unresisted? Could it fail to be per- 
 ceived that without any further stretch I might do 
 the same in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tenn- 
 essee, and Missouri, and even change any law in 
 any State? Would not many of our own friends 
 shrink away appalled? Would it not lose us the 
 elections, and with them the very cause we seek 
 to advance? 
 
 100 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Van Buren, p. 61.) 
 
 I take the official oath to-day with no mental res- 
 ervations, and with no purpose to construe the 
 Constitutioa or laws by any hypercritical rules. 
 
 101 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Van Buren, p. B2.) 
 
 I hold that, in contemplation of universal law 
 and of the Constitution, the union of these States 
 
78 The Constitution and the Law 
 
 is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not ex- 
 pressed, in the fundamental law of all national gov- 
 ernments. It is safe to assert that no government 
 proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its 
 own termination. Continue to execute all the ex- 
 press provisions of our National Constitution and 
 the Union will endure forever — it being impossible 
 to destroy it except by some action not provided 
 for in the instrument itself. 
 
 102 
 
 (February 15, 1861, Speech at Pittsburg, Pa.— Raymona, p. 139.) 
 
 By the Constitution the Executive may recom- 
 mend measures which he may think proper, and 
 he may veto those he thinks improper, and it is sup- 
 posed that he may add to these certain indirect in- 
 fluences to affect the action of Congress. My 
 political education strongly inclines me against a 
 very free use of any of these means by the Execu- 
 tive to control the legislation of the country. As a 
 rule, I think it better that Congress should origi- 
 nate as well as perfect its measures without ex- 
 ternal bias. 
 
 103 
 
 (September 15, 1868, Speech at Jonesboro, Ill.--Debates, p. 127.) 
 
 What do you understand by supporting the con- 
 stitution of a State or of the United States? Is it 
 not to give such constitutional helps to the rights 
 
The Constitution and the Law 79 
 
 established by that constitution as may be practi- 
 cally needed? Can you, if you swear to support 
 the Constitution and believe that the Constitution 
 establishes a right, clear your oath without giving 
 it support? Do you support the Constitution if, 
 knowing or believing there is a right established 
 under it which needs specific legislation, you with- 
 hold that legislation? Do you not violate and dis- 
 regard your oath? I can conceive of nothing 
 plainer in the world. 
 
 104 
 
 (April 4, 1864, Letter to A. G. Hodges— Van Buren, p. 351.) 
 
 I did understand, however, that the very oath 
 to preserve the Constitution to the best of my abil- 
 ity imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by 
 every indispensable means, that government, that 
 nation of which that Constitution was the organic 
 law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet 
 preserve the Constitution? * * * j fgi^ ^hat 
 measures otherwise unconstitutional might become 
 lawful by becoming indispensable to the preserva- 
 tion of the Constitution through the preservation 
 of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this 
 ground and now avow it. I could not feel that, to 
 the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve 
 the Constitution, if to preserve slavery or any 
 minor matter I should permit the wreck of govern- 
 ment, country and Constitution altogether. 
 
8o The Constitution and the Law 
 
 105 
 
 (June 12, 1863, Letter to Erastus Corning and others— Van Buren, 
 p. 271.) 
 
 If I be wrong on this question of constitutional 
 power, my error lies in believing that certain pro- 
 ceedings are constitutional when in case of rebellion 
 or invasion the public safety requires them, which 
 would not be constitutional when, in the absence of 
 rebellion or invasion, the public safety does not re- 
 quire them; in other words, that the Constitution 
 is not, in its application, in all respects the same 
 in cases of rebellion or invasion involving the public 
 safety, as it is in times of profound peace and public 
 security. 
 
 106 
 
 (July 20, 1863, Letter to Ohio BemocratB— Van Buren, p. 294.) 
 
 You say, "the undersigned are unable to agree 
 with you in the opinion you have expressed, that the 
 Constitution is different in time of insurrection or 
 invasion from what it is in time of peace and public 
 security." 
 
 A recurrence to the paper will show you that I 
 have not expressed the opinion you suppose. I 
 expressed the opinion that the Constitution is dif- 
 ferent in its application in cases of rebellion or 
 invasion involving the public safety from what it is 
 in times. of profound peace and public security; and 
 
The Constitution and the Law 8i 
 
 this opinion I adhere to, simply because, by the 
 Constitution, itself, things may be done in the one 
 case which may not be done in the other. 
 
 107 
 
 (October 19, 1864, Speech at a Serenade— Van Buren, p. 386.) 
 
 I am struggling to maintain the government, not 
 to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to pre- 
 vent others from overthrowing it. I therefore say 
 that, if I shall live, I shall remain President until 
 the fourth of next March, and that whoever shaiU 
 be constitutionally elected in November shall be 
 duly installed as President on the fourth of March. 
 This is due to the people, both on principle and 
 under the Constitution. Their will, constitutionally 
 expressed, is the ultimate law for all. If they 
 should deliberately resolve to have peace, even at 
 the loss of their country and their liberty, I know 
 not the power or the right to resist them. It is 
 their business, and they must do as they please 
 with their own. I believe, however, they are still 
 resolved to preserve their country and their liberty ; 
 and, in this office or out, I am resolved to stand by 
 them. 
 
 108 
 
 (July 4, 1864, To Senator Chandler— Morse, Vol. II, p. 233.) 
 
 I do not see how any of us now can deny and 
 contradict what we have always said, that Congress 
 
82 The Constitution and the Law 
 
 has no constitutional power over slavery in the 
 States. 
 
 109 
 
 (August 26, 1863, Letter to James C. Conkling— Herndon, p. 552.) 
 
 I think the Constitution invests its Commander- 
 in-Chief with the law of war in time of war. 
 
THE COURTS AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 iro 
 
 (June 17, 1858, Speecb at Springfield, 111.— The persons referred to 
 are Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Roger B. Taney and 
 James Buclianan— Debates, p. 3.) 
 
 We cannot absolutely know that these exact 
 adaptations are the result of preconcert, but when 
 we see a lot of framed timbers, diflferent portions 
 of which we know have been gotten out at different 
 times and places, and by different workmen — Ste- 
 phen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance — 
 and when we see these timbers joined together, and 
 see that they exactly make the frame of a house or 
 a millj all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, 
 and all the lengths and proportions of the different 
 pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, 
 and not a piece too many or too few — not omitting 
 even the scaffolding — or if a single piece be lack- 
 ing, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted 
 and prepared yet to bring such a piece in — in such 
 a case we feel it impossible not to believe that Ste- 
 .phen, and Franklin, and Roger, and James, all un- 
 derstood one another from the beginning, and all 
 worked upon a common plan, or draft, drawn be- 
 fore the first blow was struck. 
 
 83 
 
84 The Courts and the People 
 
 III 
 
 (June 36, 1857, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Howells, p. 175.) 
 
 Why, this Supreme Court once decided a national 
 bank to be constitutional, but General Jackson, as 
 President of the United States, disregarded the de- 
 cision and vetoed the bill for a recharter partly on 
 constitutional grounds, declaring that each public 
 functionary must support the Constitution, "as he 
 understands it." But hear the General's own 
 words. Here they are, taken from his veto mes- 
 sage: 
 
 "If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the 
 whole ground of this act, it ought not to control 
 the co-ordinate authorities of this government. 
 The Congress, the Executive and the Court must 
 each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the 
 Constitution. Each pubhc ofificer who takes an 
 oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will 
 support it as he understands it, and not as it is un- 
 derstood by others." 
 
 112 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Debates, p. 20.) 
 
 Do not gentlemen here remember the case of 
 that same Supreme Court, some twenty-five or 
 thirty years ago, deciding that a national bank was 
 constitutional? * * * The bank charter ran 
 
Tlie Courts an t'le People 85 
 
 out, and a recharter was granted by Congress. 
 That recharter was laid before General Jackson. 
 It was urged upon him, when he denied the consti- 
 tutionality of the bank, that the Supreme Court had 
 decided that it was constitutional; and that General 
 Jackson then said that the Supreme Court had no 
 right to lay down a rule to govern a co-ordinate 
 branch of the. government, the members of which 
 had sworn to support the Constitution — that each 
 member had sworn to support that Constitution as 
 he understood it. 
 
 113 
 
 (July 17, 1858, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Debates, p. 61.) 
 
 I shall read from a letter written by Mr. Jefferson 
 in 1820^ and now to be found in the seventh volume 
 of his correspondence at page 177. It seems he had 
 been presented by a gentleman of the name of Jar- 
 vis with a book, or essay, or periodical, called the 
 "Republican," and he was writing in acknowledg- 
 ment of the present and noting some of its contents. 
 After expressing the hope that the work will pro- 
 duce a favorable effect upon the minds of the 
 young, he proceeds to say : 
 
 "That it will have this tendency may be expected, 
 and for that reason I feel an urgency to note what I 
 deem an error in it, the more requiring notice as 
 your opinion is strengthened by that of many oth- 
 
85 The Comts and the People 
 
 ers. You seem, in pages 84 and 148, to consider 
 the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitu- 
 tional questions — a very dangerous doctrine indeed, 
 and one which would place us under the despotism 
 of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other 
 men, and not more so. They have, with others, the 
 same passion for party, for power, and the privi- 
 lege of their corps. Their maxim is 'honi judicis 
 est ampliare jurisdictionemf and their power is the 
 more dangerous as they are in office for life, and 
 not responsible, as the other functionaries are^ to the 
 elective control. The Constitution has erected no 
 such single tribunal, knowing that, to whatever 
 hands confided, with the corruptions of time and 
 party, its members would become despots. It has 
 more wisely made all the departments co-equal and 
 co-sovereign with themselves." 
 
 Now I have said no more than this — in fact, 
 never quite so much as this — at least I am sustained 
 by Mr. Jefiferson. 
 
 Let us go a little further. * * * General 
 Jackson himsellf asserted that he, as President, 
 would not be bound to hold a national bank to be 
 constitutional, even though the court had decided 
 it to be so. He fell in precisely with the view of 
 Mr. Jefferson, and acted upon it under his official 
 oath, in vetoing a charter for a national bank. 
 
The Courts and the People 87 
 
 114 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Debates, p. 20.) 
 
 What is fairly implied by' the term * * * "resist- 
 ance to the decision?" I do not resist it. If I 
 wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I 
 would be interfering with property, and that terri- 
 ble difficulty * * * of interfering with property 
 would arise. But I am doing no such thing as 
 that, but all that I am doing is refusing to obey it 
 as a political rule. 
 
 115 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Debates, p. 20.) 
 
 What are the uses of decisions of courts? They 
 have two uses. As rules of property they, have two 
 uses. First, they decide upon the question before 
 the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott 
 is a slave. Nobody resists that. Not only that, 
 but they say to everybody else,' that persons stand- 
 ing just as Dred Scott stands, are as he is. That is, 
 they say, when a question comes up upon another 
 person, it will be so decided again unless the court 
 decides in another way, unless the court overrules 
 its decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to 
 have the court decide the other way. That is one 
 thing we mean to try to do. 
 
88 The Courts and the People 
 
 116 
 
 (September 17, 1859, Speech at Cincinnati, O.— Debates, p. 268.) 
 
 The people of these United States are the right- 
 ful masters of both Congresses and Courts, not to 
 overthrow the Constitution,' but to overthrow the 
 men who pervert the Constitution. 
 
 117 
 
 (October 13, 1858, Speech at Quincy, III.— Debates, p. 197.) 
 
 We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain 
 way upon which I ought, perhaps, address you a 
 few words. We do not propose that when Dred 
 Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court 
 we, as a mob, will decide him to be free. We do 
 not propose that when any other one, or one thou- 
 sand, shall be decided by that court to be slaves, 
 we will, in any violent way, disturb the rights of 
 property thus settled; but we, nevertheless, do op- 
 pose that decision as a political rule which shall be 
 binding on the voter to vote for nobody who thinks 
 it wrong; which shall be binding on the members 
 of Congress or the President to favor no measure 
 that does not actually concur with the principles of 
 that decision. We do not propose to be bound by 
 it as a political rule in that way, because we think 
 it lays the foundation not merely of enlarging and 
 spreading out what we consider an evil, but it lays 
 
The Courts and the People 89 
 
 the foundation for spreading that evil into the 
 States themselves. We propose so resisting it as to 
 have it reversed, if we can, and a new judicial rule 
 established upon this subject. 
 
 118 
 
 (June 17, 1858, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Debates, p. 61.) 
 
 I am opposed to that decision in a certain sense, 
 but not in the sense which he puts on it. I say that 
 in so far as it decides in favor of Dred Scott's mas- 
 ter and against Dred Scott and his family, I do not 
 propose to disturb or resist the decision. I never 
 have proposed to do any such thing. * * * He 
 would have the citizen conform his vote to that de- 
 cision, the member of Congress his, the President 
 his use of the veto power. He would make it a 
 rule of political action for the people and all the 
 departments of the government. I would not. By 
 resisting it as a political rule I disturb no rights of 
 property, create no disorder, excite no mobs. 
 
 119 
 
 (September 17, 1859, Speech at Cincinnati, O.— Debates, p. 257.) 
 
 We know that in a government like this, in a 
 government of the people, where the voice of all the 
 men of that country, substantially, enters into the 
 execution — or administration rather — of the gov- 
 ernment, in such a government what lies at the bot- 
 tom of all of it is public opinion. 
 
90 The Courts and the People 
 
 120 
 
 (August 21, 1858, Speech at Ottawa, III.— Debates, p. 82.) 
 
 In this and like communities public sentiment is 
 everything. With public sentiment nothing can 
 fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently 
 he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than 
 he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He 
 makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible 
 to be executed. 
 
 121 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural— Raymond, p. 167.) 
 
 I do not forget the position assumed by some, 
 that constitutional questions are to be decided by 
 the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such de- 
 cisions must be binding, in any case, upon the par- 
 ties to the suit, as to the objects of that suit, while 
 they are also entitled to very high respect and con- 
 sideration in all parallel cases, by all other depart- 
 ments of the government. And while it is ob- 
 viously possible that such decisions may be 
 erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect fol- 
 lowing it being limited to that particular case, with 
 the chance that it may be overruled, and never be- 
 come a precedent for other cases, can better be 
 borne than could the evils of a different prac- 
 tice. At the same time the candid citizen must 
 
The Courts and the People 9 1 
 
 confess that if the policy of the government, upon 
 vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be 
 irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme 
 Court, the instant they are made in ordinary liti- 
 gation, between parties in personal actions, the peo- 
 ple will have ceased to be their own rulers, having 
 to that extent practically resigned their govern- 
 ment into the hands of that eminent tribunal. 
 
SUFFRAGE AND ELECTIONS. 
 122 
 
 (November 10, 1864, Response to a Serenade— Van Buren, p. 391.) 
 
 Human nature will not change. In any future 
 great national trial, compared with the men of this, 
 we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and 
 as wise, as bad and as good. 
 
 Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as a 
 philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of 
 them as wrongs to be revenged. But the election, 
 along with its incidental and undesirable strife, has 
 done good, too. It has demonstrated that a peo- 
 ple's government can sustain a national election in 
 the midst of a great civil war. Until now it was 
 not known to the world that this was a possibility. 
 
 123 
 
 (January 30, 1861, Interview Published in New York Tribune— Van 
 Buren, p. 16.) 
 
 I will sufifer death before I will consent, or advise 
 my friends to consent, to any concessions or com- 
 promise which looks like buying the privilege of 
 taking possession of the government to which we 
 have a constitutional right. 
 
 S3 
 
94 Suffrage and Elections 
 
 124 
 
 (October 1, 1858, Notes for a Speech— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 
 427.) 
 
 To g^ve the victory to the rights no bloody bul- 
 lets but peaceful ballots, only, are necessary. Thanks 
 to our good old Constitution, and organization un- 
 der it, these alone are necessary. It only needs 
 that every right thinking man shall go to the polls, 
 and, without fear or prejudice, vote as he thinks. 
 
 125 
 
 (November 20, 1860, Remarks at the Celebration of his ElecUon, 
 Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 655.) 
 
 In all our rejoicings, let us neither express nor 
 cherish any hard feelings toward any citizen who, 
 by his vote, has differed with us. Let us at all times 
 remember that all American citizens are brothers 
 of a common country, and should dwell together 
 in bonds of fraternal feeling. 
 
 126 
 
 (November 10, 1864, Response to a Serenade— Van Buren, p. 390.) 
 
 It has long been a grave question whether any 
 government, not too strong for the liberties of the 
 people, can be strong enough to maintain its exist- 
 ence in great emergencies. On this point the pres- 
 ent rebellion brought our republic to a severe test, 
 and a presidential election, occurring in regular 
 
Suffrage and Elections 95 
 
 course during the rebellion, added not a little to the 
 strain. 
 
 If the loyal people united were put to the utmost 
 of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail 
 when divided and partially paralyzed by a political 
 war among themselves? But the election was a 
 necessity. We cannot have free government with- 
 out elections. 
 
 127 
 
 (June 13, 1836, Announcement of Political Views— Coffin, p. 89.) 
 
 I go for all sharing the privilege of the govern- 
 ment who assist in bearing its burdens; conse- 
 quently, I go for admitting all whites to the right 
 of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no 
 means excluding females. 
 
 128 
 
 (Interview, Springfield, III.— Herndon, p. 625.) 
 
 I am Opposed to the limitation or lessening of 
 the right of suffrage. If anything I am in favor of 
 its extension or enlargement. I want to lift men 
 up — ^to broaden rather than contract their privi- 
 leges. 
 
 129 
 
 (February 27, 1860, Speech at Cooper Institute, New York— How- 
 ella, p. 210.) 
 
 To be sure, what the robber demands of me — 
 
96 Suffrage and Elections 
 
 my money — was my own; and I had a clear right 
 to keep it ; but it was no more my own than my vote 
 is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort 
 my money, and the threat of destruction to the 
 Union, to extort my .vote, can scarcely be distin- 
 guished in principle. 
 
 130 
 
 (October 27, 1863, Prom Letter to T. Swann— Complete Works, Vol. 
 II, p. 431.) 
 
 I am somewhat mortified that there could be any 
 doubt of my views upon the point of your inquiry. 
 I wish all loyal qualified voters in Maryland and 
 elsewhere to have the undisturbed privilege of vot- 
 ing at elections; and neither my authority nor my 
 name can be properly used to the contrary. 
 
 131 
 
 (July 4, 1864, Letter to the Postmaster at Philadelphia, Pa.— Tar- 
 bell, Vol. II, p. 204.) 
 
 My wish is that you will do just as you think fit 
 with your own suffrage, in the case, and not con- 
 strain any of your subordinates to other than he 
 thinks fit with his. 
 
 132 
 
 (March 17, 1860, Letter to E. Stafford— Complete Works, Vol. I, 
 p. 632.) 
 
 Dear Sir: Reaching home on the 14th instant, 
 I found yours of the ist. Thanking you very sin- 
 
Suffrage and Elections 97 
 
 cerely for your kind purpose toward me, I am com- 
 pelled to say the money part of the arrangement 
 you propose is with me an impossibility. I could 
 not raise ten thousand dollars if it would save me 
 from the fate of John Brown. Nor have my 
 friends, so far as I know, yet reached the point of 
 staking any money on my chances of success. I 
 wish I could tell you better things, but it is even 
 so. Yours very truly, 
 
 A. LINCOLN. 
 
 933 
 
 (March 16, 1S60, Letter to friend in Kansas— Herndon, p. 458.) 
 
 As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me to 
 say I cannot enter the ring on the money basis — 
 first, because in the main it is wrong; and secondly, 
 I have not and cannot get the money. I say in the 
 main the use of money is wrong; but for certain ob- 
 jects in a political contest the use of some is both 
 right and indispensable. 
 
 With me, as with yourself, this long struggle has 
 been one of great pecuniary loss. I now distinctly 
 say this: If you shall be appointed a delegate to 
 Chicago I will furnish one hundred dollars to bear 
 the expenses of the trip. 
 
 134 
 
 (October 22, 1864, Letter to Wm. B. Campbell— Barrett, p. 658.) 
 
 I presume that the conducting of a presidential 
 
 V 
 
98 Suffrage and Election,!, 
 
 election in Tennessee in strict accordance with the 
 old code of the State, is not now a possibility. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to add that if any elec- 
 tion shall be held and any vote cast in the State of 
 Tennessee for President and Vice-President of the 
 United States, it will belong, not to the military 
 agents, nor yet to the executive department, but 
 exclusively to another department of the govern- 
 ment, to determine whether they are entitled to be 
 counted in conformity with the Constitution and 
 laws of the United States. Except it be to give 
 protection against violence, I decline to interfere 
 in any way with any presidential election. 
 
CAPITAL, LAND AND LABOR. 
 135 
 
 (February 12, 1861, Speech at Cincinnati, 0.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I. p. 676.) 
 
 In regard to the homestead law, 1 have to say that 
 in so far as the government lands can be disposed 
 of, I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into 
 parcels, so that every poor man may have a home. 
 
 136 
 
 (December 20, 1839, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 24.) 
 
 Knowing, as I well do, the difficulty that poor 
 people now encounter in procuring homes, 1 hesi- 
 tate not to say that when the price of the public 
 land shall be doubled or trebled, or, which is the 
 same thing, produce and labor cut down to one- 
 half or one-third of their present prices, it will be 
 little less than impossible for them to procure those 
 homes at all. 
 
 137 
 
 (February 12, 1861, Speech at Cincinnati, O.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 676.) 
 
 In regard to the Germans and foreigners, I es- 
 teem them no better than other people, nor any 
 worse. It is not my nature, when I see a people 
 borne down by the weight of their shackles — the 
 
lOO Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 oppression of tyranny — to make their life more bit- 
 ter by lieaping upon them greater burdens; but 
 rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke 
 than to add anything that would tend to crush 
 them. 
 
 Inasmuch as our country is extensive and new, 
 and the countries of Europe are densely populated, 
 if there are any abroad who desire to make this 
 the land of their adoption, it is not in my heart to 
 throw aught in their way to prevent them from com- 
 ing to the United States. 
 
 138 
 
 (October 15, 1858, Speech at Alton, 111.— Debates, p. 232.) 
 
 Now, irrespective of the moral aspect of this ques- 
 tion as to whether there is a right or wrong in 
 enslavirig a negro, I am still in favor of our new 
 territories being in such a condition that white men 
 may find a home; may find some spot where they 
 can better their condition, where they can settle 
 upon new soil and better their condition in life. I 
 am in favor of this, not merely (I must say it here 
 as I have elsewhere) for our own people who are 
 born amongst us, but as an outlet for free white 
 people everywhere the world over in which Hans, 
 and Baptiste, and Patrick, and all other men from 
 all the world, may find new homes and better their 
 condition in life. 
 
Capital, Land and Labor loi 
 
 139 
 
 (February 2, 1S63, Letter to Working Men of London, Bng.— Com- 
 plete Works, Vol. II, p. 308.) 
 
 The resources, advantages and powers of the 
 American people are very great, and they have con- 
 sequently succeeded to equally great responsibili- 
 ties. It seems to have devolved upon them to test 
 whether a government established on the princi- 
 ples of human freedom can be maintained against 
 an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation 
 of human bondage. 
 
 140 
 
 (October 1, 1858, Notes for Speeches— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 
 413.) 
 
 Suppose the Rev. Dr. Ross has a slave named 
 Sambo, and the question is, "Is it the will of God 
 that Sambo shall remain a slave, or be set free?" 
 The Almighty gives no audible answer to the ques- 
 tion, and his revelation, the Bible, gives none — or 
 at most none but such as admits of a squabble as 
 to its meaning; no one thinks of asking Sambo's 
 opinion of it. So at last it comes to this, that Dr. 
 Ross is to decide the question, and while he consid- 
 ers it he sits in the shade, with gloves on his hands, 
 and subsists on the bread that Sambo is earning in 
 the burning sun. If he decides that God wills 
 Sambo to continue a slave, he thereby retains his 
 own comfortable position; but if he decides that 
 
^ 
 
 1 02 Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 God wills Sambo to be free, he thereby has to walk 
 out of the shade, throw oflf his gloves and delve' 
 for his own bread. Will Dr. Ross be actuated by 
 the perfect impartiality which has ever been consid- 
 ered most favorable to correct decisions? 
 
 141 
 
 (February 12, 1861, Speech at Cincinnati, O.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I. p. 676.) 
 
 The workingmen are the basis of all govern- 
 ments, for the plain reason that they are the more 
 numerous. 
 
 142 
 
 (December 1, 1862, Annual Message— Van Buren, p. 233.) 
 
 Labor is like any other commodity in the mar- 
 ket — increase the demand for it and you increase 
 the price. 
 
 143 
 
 (March 6, 1860, Speech at New Haven, Conn.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 622.) 
 
 Let each let the other alone, and there is no 
 struggle about it. If it was like two wrecked sea- 
 men on a narrow plank, where each must push the 
 other of? or drown himself, I would push the negro 
 ofiE — or a white man either; but it is not: the plank 
 is large enough for both. This good earth is plenty 
 broad enough for white man and negro both, and 
 there is no need of either pushing the other off. 
 
Capital, Land and Labor 103 
 
 144 
 
 (July 1, 1854, Fragment on Slavery— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 
 179.) 
 
 There is no permanent class of hired laborers 
 amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired \^ 
 laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors on 
 his own account to-day, and will hire others to labor 
 for him to-morrow. Advancement — improvement 
 in condition — is the order of things in a society of 
 equals. As labor is the common Ijurden of our 
 race, so the effort -of some to shift their share of 
 the burden onto the shoulders of others is the 
 great durable curse of the race. 
 
 145 
 
 (October 15, 1858, Speech at Alton, 111.— Debates, p. 234.) 
 
 That is the issue that will, continue in this country 
 when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and 
 myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle 
 between these two principles — right and wrong — 
 throughout the world. They are the two principles 
 that have stood face to face from the beginning of 
 time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one 
 is the common right of humanity and the other the 
 divine right of kings. It is the same principle in 
 whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same 
 spirit that says, "You work and toil and earn bread 
 and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it comes. 
 
 1^ 
 
104 Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to 
 bestride the people of his own nation and Hve by 
 the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as 
 an apology for enslaving another race, it is the 
 same tyrannical principle. 
 
 146 
 
 (December 5, 1864, Annual Message— Haymond, p. 635.) 
 
 In presenting the abandonment of armed resist- 
 ance to the national authority on the part of the in- 
 surgents as the only indispensable condition to 
 ending the war on the part of the government, I 
 retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. I re- 
 peat the declaration made a year ago that while I 
 remain in my present position I shall not attempt 
 to retract or modify the emancipation proclama- 
 tion. Nor shall I return to slavery any person who 
 is free by the terms of that proclamation or by any 
 act of Congress. If the people should, by what- 
 ever mode or means, make it an executive duty to 
 re-enslave such persons, another and not I must 
 be their instrument to perform it. 
 
 147 
 
 (March 6, 1860, Speech at New Haven, Conn., alluding to shoe- 
 makers' strike— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 625.) 
 
 I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in 
 New England under which laborers can strike 
 when they want to, where they are not obliged to 
 
Capital, Land a7id Labor 105 
 
 work under all circumstances, and are not tied 
 down and obliged to labor whether you pay them 
 or not. I like the system which lets a man quit 
 when he wants to, and wish it might prevail every- 
 where. One of the reasons why I am opposed to 
 slavery is just here. What is the true condition of 
 the laborer? I take it that it is best for all to leave 
 each man free to acquire property as fast as he 
 can. Some will get wealthy. I don't believe in 
 law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would 
 do more harm than good. So while we do not pro- 
 pose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the 
 humbkst man an equal chance to get rich with 
 everybody else. When one starts poor, as most 
 do in the race of life, free society is such that he 
 knows he can better his condition; he knows that 
 there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole 
 life. I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five 
 years ago I was a hired laborer, mauHng rails, at 
 work on a flatboat — ^just what might happen to any 
 poor man's son. I want every man to have the 
 chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it — - 
 in which he can better his condition ; when he may 
 look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this 
 year and the next, work for himself afterwards, 
 and finally to hire men to work for him. That is 
 the true system. Up here in New England you 
 have a soil that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans, 
 
I 
 
 1 06 Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 and yet where will you find wealthy men so 
 wealthy, and poverty so rarely in extremity? There 
 is not another such place on earth! I desire that 
 if you get too thick here, and find it hard to better 
 your condition on this soil, you may have a chance 
 .to strike and go somewhere else, where you may 
 not be degraded, nor have your family corrupted 
 by forced rivalry with negro slaves. I want you 
 to have a clean bed and no snakes in it. Then you 
 can better your condition, and so it may go on and 
 on in one ceaseless round so long as man exists on 
 the face of the earth. 
 
 148 
 
 (April 18, 1864, Remarks at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Md.— Bar- 
 rett, p. 477.) 
 
 The world is in want of a, good definition of the 
 word liberty. We all declare ourselves to be for 
 liberty; but we do not all mean the same thing. 
 Some mean that a man can do as he pleases with 
 himself and his property. With others it means 
 that some men can do as they please with other 
 men and other men's labor. Each of these things 
 is called liberty, although they are entirely differ- 
 ent. To give an illustration: A shepherd drives 
 a wolf from the throat of his sheep when attacked 
 by him, and the sheep of course thanks the shep- 
 herd for the preservation of his life; but the wolf 
 
Capital, Land and Labor 107 
 
 denounces him as despoiling the wolf of his lib- 
 erty; especially if it be a black sheep. 
 
 149 
 
 (September 17, 1859, Speech at Cincinnati, 0.— Howells, p. 148.) 
 
 Our government was not established that one 
 man might do with himself as he pleases, and with 
 another man, too. I hold that if there is any one 
 thing that can be proved to be the will of Heaven by 
 external nature around us, without reference to rev- 
 elation, it is the proposition that whatever any one 
 man earns with his hands and by the sweat of his 
 brow, he shall enjoy in peace. I say that, whereas God 
 Almighty has given every man one mouth to be 
 fed, and one pair of hands adapted to furnish food 
 for that movith, if anything can be proved to be the 
 will of Heaven, it is proved by the fact that that 
 mouth is to be fed by those hands, without being 
 interfered with by any other man, who has also his 
 mouth to feed and his hands to labor with. I hold, 
 if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that 
 should do all the eating and none of the work. He 
 would have made them with mouths only and no 
 hands; and if Heliad ever made another class that 
 He intended should do all the work, and none of 
 the eating. He would have made them without 
 mouths and with all hands. But inasmuch as He 
 has not chosen to make man in that way, if any- 
 
L- 
 
 io8 Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 thing is proved it is that those hands and mouths 
 are to be co-operative through life and not to be 
 interfered with. That they are to go forth and im- 
 prove their condition, as I have been trying to il- 
 lustrate, is the inherent right given to mankind 
 directly by the Maker. 
 
 150 
 
 (Decembers, 1861, Annual Message— Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 105.) 
 
 Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a pos- 
 sible refuge from the power of the people. In my 
 present position I could scarcely be justified were I 
 to omit raising a warning voice against this ap- 
 proach of returning despotism. 
 
 It is not needed nor fitting here that a general 
 argument should be made in favor of popular in- 
 stitutions; but there is one point, with its connec- 
 tions not so hackneyed as most others, to which I 
 ask brief attention. It is the effort to place capital 
 on an equal footing with,. if not above, labor, in the 
 structure of government. It is assumed that labor 
 is available only in connection with capital; that 
 nobody labors unless somebody else owning capi- 
 tal, somehow by the use of it, induces him to labor. 
 * * * 
 
 Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. 
 Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never 
 
Capital, Land and Labor 109 
 
 have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor 
 is the superior of capital, and deserves much the 
 highest consideration. * * * No men living 
 are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil 
 up from poverty; none less inclined to take or 
 touch aught which they have not honestly earned. 
 Let them beware of surrendering a political power 
 which they already possess, and which, if surren- 
 dered, will surely be used to close the door of ad- 
 vancement against such as they, and to fix new 
 disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty 
 shall be lost. 
 
 151 
 
 (March 21, 1864, Reply to Committee of Workingmen's Association 
 of New York— Coffin, p. 395.) 
 
 The most notable feature of the disturbance in 
 your city last year was the hanging of some work- 
 ing people by other working people. It should 
 never be so. The strongest bond of human sym- 
 pathy outside the family relation should be one 
 uniting all working people of all nations, tongues 
 and kindreds; nor should this lead to a war on 
 property or owners of property. Property is Ihe 
 fruit of labor. It is desirable. It is a positive good 
 to the world. That some should be rich shows 
 that others may become rich, and hence is just en- 
 couragement to industry and enterprise. Let not 
 
I lo Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 him who is houseless pull down the house of an- 
 other, but let him labor diligently and build one 
 for himself, thus by example assuring that his own 
 shall be safe from violence when built. 
 
 152 
 
 (January 19, 1863, Reply to Workingmen of Manchester, Eng.— 
 Eaymond, p. 497.) 
 
 I know and deeply deplore the suffering which 
 the workingmen at Manchester and in all Europe 
 are called upon to endure in this crisis. It has 
 been often and studiously represented that the at- 
 tempt to overthrow this government, which was 
 built upon the foundation of human rights, and to 
 substitute for it one which would rest exclusively 
 on the basis of human slavery, was likely to obtain 
 the favor of Europe. 
 
 Through the action of our disloyal citizens the 
 workingmen of Europe have been subject to severe 
 trials for the purpose of forcing their sanction to 
 that attempt. Under the circumstances I cannot 
 but regard your decisive utterance upon the ques- 
 tion as an instance of sublime Christian heroism 
 which has not been surpassed in any age or any 
 country. It is indeed an energetic and reinspiring 
 assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the 
 ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity 
 and freedom. 
 
Capital, Land and Labor in 
 
 153 
 
 (December 1, 1847, Fragment ol Speech— Complete Works, Vol. I, 
 p. 92.) 
 
 In the early days of our race the Almighty said 
 to the first of our race, "In the sweat of thy face 
 shalt thou eat bread," and since then, if we except 
 the light and air of Heaven, no good thing has been 
 or can be enjoyed by us without having first cost 
 labor. And inasmuch as most good things are 
 produced by labor, it follows that all such things 
 of right belong to those whose labor has produced 
 them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the 
 world, that some have labored, and others have, 
 without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the 
 fruits. This is wrong and should not continue. 
 To secure to each laborer the whole product of his 
 labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of 
 any good government. 
 
 154 
 
 (September 30, 1859, Speech at Milwaukee, Wis.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 582.) 
 
 The old general rule was that educated people 
 did not perform manual labor. They managed to 
 eat their bread, leaving the toil of producing it to 
 the uneducated. This was not an insupportable 
 evil to, the working bees, so long as the class of 
 drones remained very small. But now, especially 
 in these free States, nearly all are educated — quite 
 
112 Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 too nearly all to leave the labor of the uneducated 
 in any wise adequate to the support of the whole. 
 It follows from this that henceforth educated peo- 
 ple must labor. Otherwise, education itself would 
 become a positive and intolerable evil. No coun- 
 try can sustain in idleness more than a small per- 
 centage of its numbers. The great majority must 
 labor at something productive. From these 
 premises the problem springs, "How can labor and 
 education be the most satisfactorily combined?" 
 
 By the "mud-sill' theory it is assumed that labor 
 and education are incompatible, and any practical 
 combination of them impossible. According to 
 that theory a blind horse upon a tread-mill is a per- 
 fect illustration of what a laborer should be — all the 
 better for being blind, that he could not kick under- 
 standingly. According to that theory, the educa- 
 tion of laborers is not only useless but pernicious 
 and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed 
 a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all. 
 Those same heads are regarded as explosive ma- 
 terials, only to be safely kept in damp places as far 
 as possible from that peculiar sort of fire which 
 ignites them. A Yankee who could invent a 
 strong-handed man without a head would receive 
 the everlasting gratitude of the mud-sill advocates. 
 
 But free labor says "No." Free labor argues 
 that as the Author of man makes every individual 
 with one head and one pair of hands, it was proba- 
 
Capital, Land and Labor 113 
 
 bly intended that heads and hands should co-oper- 
 ate as friendsj and that that particular head should 
 direct and control that pair of hands. As each 
 man has one mouth to be fed, and one pair of 
 hands to furnish the food, it was probably intended 
 that that particular pair of hands should feed that 
 particular mouth — that each head is the natural 
 guardian, director and protector of the hands and 
 mouth inseparably connected with it, and that being 
 so, every head should be cultivated and improved 
 by whatever will add to its capacity for performing 
 its charge. In one word, free labor insists on uni- 
 versal education. 
 
 155 
 
 (March 4, 1865, Seconii Inaugural— Hapgood, p. 403.) 
 
 It may seem strange that any men should dare 
 to ask a just God's assistance in wringing bread 
 from the sweat of other men's faces. 
 
 156 
 
 (May 30, 1864, From Letter to Dr. Ide and Others— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II, p. 526.) 
 
 To read in the Bible, as the Word of God Him- 
 self, that "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
 bread," and to preach therefrom that "In the sweat 
 of other men's faces shalt thou eat bread," to my 
 mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sin- 
 cerity. When brought to my final reckoning, may 
 
114 Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 I have to answer for robbing no man of his goods; 
 yet more tolerable even this, than for robbing one 
 of himself and all that was his. When a year or 
 two ago those professedly holy men of the South 
 met in the semblance of prayer and devotion, and 
 in the name of Him who said, "As ye would all 
 men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them," 
 appealed to the Christian world to aid them in doing 
 to a whole race of men as they would have no man 
 do unto themselves, to my thinking they con- 
 temned and insulted God and His church far more 
 than did Satan when he tempted the Saviour with 
 the kingdoms of the earth. The devil's attempt 
 was no more false, and far less hypocritical. 
 
 157 
 
 (September 17, 1859, Speech at Cincinnati, 0.— Debates, p. 267.) 
 
 . I Labor is the great source from which nearly all, 
 ' if not all, human comforts and necessities are 
 drawn. There is a difference in opinion about the 
 elements of labor in society. Some men assume 
 that there is a necessary connection between capital 
 and labor, and that connection draws within it the 
 whole of the labor of the community. They as- 
 sume that nobody works unless capital excites them 
 to work. They begin next to consider what is the 
 best way. They say there are but two ways — one 
 is to hire men and to allure them to labor by their 
 
Capital, Land and Labor 115 
 
 consent; the other is to buy the men and drive 
 them to it, and that is slavery. Having assumed 
 that, they proceed to discuss the question of 
 whether the laborers themselves are better off in 
 the condition of slaves or of hired laborers, and 
 they usually decide that they are better off in the 
 condition of slaves. In the first place, I say that 
 the whole thing is a mistake. That there is a cer- 
 tain relation between capital and labor I admit. 
 That it does exist, and rightfully exists, I think is 
 true. That men who are industrious and sober and 
 honest in the pursuit of their own interests should 
 after awhile accumulate capital, and after that 
 should be allowed to enjoy it in peace, and also, if 
 they should choose, when they have accumulated it, 
 to use it to save themselves from actual labor, and 
 hire other people to labor for them, is right. In 
 doing so they do not wrong the men they employ, 
 for they find men who have not their own land to 
 work upon, or shops to work in, and who are bene- 
 fited by working for others — hired laborers, receiv- 
 ing their capital for it. Thus a few men who own 
 capital hire a few others, and these establish the re- 
 lation of capital and labor rightfully — a relation of 
 which I make no complaint. But I insist that that 
 relation, after all, does not embrace more than one- 
 eighth of the labor of the country. 
 
ii6 Capital, Land and Labor 
 
 158 
 
 (January, 1837, Speech, Legislature of Illinois— Tarbell, 2v, p. 281.) 
 
 These capitalists generally act harmoniously and 
 in concert, to fleece the people, and now, that they 
 have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are 
 called upon to appropriate the people's money to 
 settle the quarrel. 
 
 159 
 
 (1856— History of Abraham Lincoln- Arnold, p. 97.) 
 
 We will hereafter speak for freedom and against 
 slavery, as long as the Constitution guarantees free 
 speech; until everywhere on this wide land the sun 
 shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the wind' 
 shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unre- 
 quited toil. 
 
FOREIGN POLICY AND EXPANSION. 
 160 
 
 (September 30, 1859, Speecb at Milwaukee, Wis.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 576.) 
 
 To correct the evils, great and small, which 
 spring from want of sympathy and from positive 
 enmity among strangers, as nations or as individ- 
 uals, is one of the highest functions of civilization. 
 
 161 
 
 (February 15, 1848, Letter to W. H. Herndon— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I. p. 111.) 
 
 Allow the President to invade a neighboring na- 
 tion whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel 
 an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever 
 he may choose to say he deems it necessary for 
 such purpose, and you allow him to make war at 
 pleasure. Study to see if you can fix a limit to his 
 power in this respect, after having given him so 
 much as you propose. If to-day he should choose 
 to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to 
 prevent the British from invading us, how could 
 you stop him? You may say to him, "I see no 
 probability of the British invading us," but he will 
 say to you, "Be silent; I see it if you don't." 
 
 117 
 
ii8 Foreign Policy and Expansion 
 
 162 
 
 (November IB, 1861, Conversation with Benson J. Lossing con- 
 cerning tlie capture of Mason and Slidell, Confederate com- 
 missioners, upon tlie Britisli vessel, Trent— Tarbell, Vol. II, 
 P. 72.) 
 
 We must stick to American principles concern- 
 ing the right of neutrals. We fought Great Britain 
 for insisting by theory and practice on the right to 
 do exactly what Captain Wilkes has done. If 
 Great Britain shall now protest against the act and 
 demand their release, we must give them up, apolo- 
 gize for the act as a violation of our doctrine, and 
 thus forever bind her over to keep the peace in re- 
 lation to neutrals, and so acknowledge that she has 
 been wrong for sixty years. 
 
 163 
 
 (September 18, 1858, Speech at Charlestown, III.— Debates, p. 158.) 
 
 Whenever there was an attempt to procure a 
 vote of mine which would indorse the origin 
 and justice of the war (Mexican), I refused to give 
 such indorsement and voted against it; but I never 
 voted against the supplies for the army. 
 
 164 
 
 (February 1, 1S48, Letter to W. H. Herndon referring to Lincoln's 
 vote in Congress — Herndon, p. 281.) 
 
 That vote affirms that the (Mexican) war was 
 unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced 
 by the President, and I will stake my life, if you had 
 
Foreign Policy and Expansion 119 
 
 been in my place, you would have voted just as I 
 did. Would you have voted what you felt and 
 knew to be a lie? I know you would not. Would 
 you have gone out of the House — skulked the vote? 
 I expect not. If you had skulked one vote, you 
 would have had to skulk many more before the 
 close of the session. Richardson's resolutions, 
 introduced before I made any move, or gave any, 
 vote upon the subject, made the direct question of 
 the justice of the war, so that no man can be silent 
 if he would. You are compelled to speak; and 
 your only alternative is to tell the truth or tell a lie. 
 
 165 
 
 (August 21, 1858, Speech at Ottawa, 111.— Debates, p. 75.) 
 
 You remember I was an Old Whig, and when- 
 ever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote 
 that the war had been righteously begun by the 
 President, I would not do it. But whenever they 
 asked for any money, or land- warrants, or anything 
 to pay the soldiers there, during all that time, I 
 gave the same vote Judge Douglas did. You can 
 think as you please as to whether that was consist- 
 ent. Such is the truth ; and the Judge has the right 
 to make all he can out of it. But when he, by a 
 general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld 
 supplies from the soldiers who were fighting the 
 Mexican War, or did anything else to hinder the 
 
I20 Foreign Policy and Expansion 
 
 soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and alto- 
 gether mistaken, as a consultation of the records 
 will prove him. 
 
 166 
 
 (February 1, 1861i Letter to W. H. Seward— Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, p. 669.) 
 
 I say now, however, as I have all the while said, 
 that on the territorial question — that is, of extend- 
 ing slavery under the national auspices — I am in- 
 flexible. I am for no compromise which assists or 
 permits the extension of the institution on soil 
 owned by the nation. And any trick by which the 
 nation is to acquire territory, and then to allow 
 some local authority to spread slavery over it, is 
 as obnoxious as any other. I take it that to effect 
 some such result as this, and put us again on the 
 high road to a slave empire, is the object of all these 
 proposed compromises. I am against it. 
 
 167 
 
 (February 22, 1860, Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions— Com- 
 plete Works, Vol. I, p. 523.) 
 
 As Plato had for the immortality of soul, so 
 Young America has "a pleasing hope, a fond de- 
 sire, — a longing after" territory. He has a great 
 passion — a perfect rage — for the "new," particu- 
 larly new men for office, and the new earth men- 
 tioned in the Revelations, in which, being no more 
 
Foreign Policy and Expansion 121 
 
 sea, there must be about three times as much land 
 as in the present. He is a great friend of human- 
 ity, and his desire for land is not selfish, but merely 
 an impulse to extend the area of freedom. He is 
 very anxious to fight for the liberatfon of enslaved 
 nations and colonies, provided, always, they have 
 land, and have not any liking for his interference. 
 As to those who have no land, and would be glad 
 of help from any quarter, he considers they can. 
 afford to wait a few hunderd years longer. In 
 knowledge he is particularly rich. He knows all 
 that can possibly be known; inclines to believe in 
 spiritual rappings, and is the unquestioned inventor 
 of Manifest Destiny. 
 
 168 
 
 (October 7, 1858, Speech at Galesburg, 111.— Debates, p. 187.) 
 
 We have no clear and certain way of determining 
 or demonstrating how fast territory is needed by 
 the necessities of the country. Whoever wants to 
 go out filibustering, then, thinks that more terri- 
 tory is needed. Whoever wants wider slave-fields 
 feels sure that some additional territory is needed 
 as slave territory. Then it is easy to show the 
 necessity of additional slave territory as it is to as- 
 sert anything that is incapable of absolute demon- 
 stration. Whatever motive a man or a set of men 
 have for making annexation of property or terri- 
 
122 Foreign Policy and Expansion 
 
 tory, it is very easy to assert, but much less easy 
 to disprove, that it is necessary for the wants of 
 the country. And now it only remains for me to 
 say that I think it a very grave question for the 
 people of this Union to consider, whether in view 
 of the fact that this slavery question has been the 
 only one that has ever endangered our republican 
 institutions — the only one that has ever threatened 
 or menaced a dissolution of the Union, that has 
 ever disturbed us in such a way as to make us fear 
 for the perpetuity of our liberty — in view of these 
 facts, I think it is an exceedingly interesting and 
 important question for this people to consider 
 whether we shall engage in the policy of acquiring 
 additional territory, discarding altogether from our 
 consideration, while obtaining new territory, the 
 question how it may efifect us in regard to this, the 
 only endangering element to our liberties and na- 
 tional greatness. 
 
 169 
 
 (Becember 3, 1861, Annual Message — Raymond, p 222.) 
 
 To carry out the plan of colonization may in- 
 volve the acquiring of territory and also the appro- 
 priation of money beyond that to be expended in 
 the territorial acquisition. Having practiced the 
 acquisition of territory for nearly sixty years the 
 question of constitutional power to do so is no 
 
Foreign Policy and Expansion 123 
 
 longer an open one with us. The power was ques- 
 tioned at first by Mr, Jefferson, who, however, in 
 the purchase of Louisiana yielded his scruples on the 
 plea of great expediency. If it be said that the 
 only legitimate object of acquiring territory is to 
 furnish homes for white men, this measure effects 
 that object; for the emigration of colored men 
 leaves additional room for the white men remaining 
 or coming here. Mr. Jefferson^ however, placed the 
 importance of procuring Louisiana more on politi- 
 cal and commercial grounds than on providing 
 room for population. 
 
MONEY, GREENBACKS, SILVER AND 
 
 GOLD. 
 
 170 
 
 (August 31. 1864, Speech to the 148th Ohio Regiment concerning 
 the duty of main tuning the government— Van Buren, p. 382.) 
 
 I beg of you not to allow your minds or your 
 hearts to be diverted from the support of all neces- 
 sary measures for the purpose by any miserable 
 picayune arguments addressed to your pockets or 
 inflammatory appeal made to your passions and 
 your prejudices. 
 
 171 
 
 (December 6, 1864, Annual Message— Raymond, p. 629.) 
 
 It seems quite clear that the treasury cannot be 
 successfully conducted unless the government can 
 exercise a restraining power over the bank-note 
 circulation of the country. 
 
 172 
 
 (October 12, 1864, interview with D. R. Loclie— Coffin, p. 462.) 
 
 I cannot understand why men should be so eager 
 after money. Wealth is simply a superfluity of what 
 we don't need. 
 
 125 
 
126 Money, Greenbacks, Silver and Gold 
 
 173 
 
 (November 10, 1864, Speech at a Serenade— Barrett, p. 662.) 
 
 Gold is good enough in its place, but living, brave, 
 patriotic men are better than gold. 
 174 
 
 (December 20, 1839; Speech at Springfleld, 111.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 25.) 
 
 No duty is more imperative on the government 
 than the duty it owes the people of furnishing them 
 a sound and uniform currency. 
 
 175 
 
 (December 20, 1839, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 22.) 
 
 Any person who will reflect that money is only 
 valuable while in circulation, will readily perceive 
 that any device which will keep the government 
 revenues in constant circulation, instead of being 
 Ipcked up in idleness, is no inconsiderable advant- 
 age. 
 
 176 
 
 (November 10, 1860, Letter to Truman Smith — Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 654.) 
 
 I am not insensible to any commercial or financial 
 depression that may exist, but nothing is to be 
 gained by fawning around the "respectable scoun- 
 drels" who got it up. Let them go to work and 
 
Money, Greenbacks, SUver and Gold 127 
 
 repair the mischief of their own making, and then, 
 perhaps, they will be less greedy to do the like 
 again. 
 
 177 
 
 (December 1, 1862, Annual Message— Raymond, p. 347.) 
 
 Fluctuations in the volume of currency are al- 
 ways injurious, and to reduce these fluctuations to 
 the lowest possible point will always be a leading 
 purpose in wise legislation. 
 
 178 
 
 (December 20, 1839, Speech at Springfield, 111.— The Money Qucs- 
 Uon— Shibley, p. 114.) 
 
 When one hundred millions, or more, of the circu- 
 lation we now have shall be withdrawn, who can con- 
 template without terror the distress, ruin, bankrupt- 
 cy and beggary that must follow. The man who has 
 purchased an article — say a horse — on credit, at 
 one hundred dollars, when there are two hundred 
 millions circulating in the country, if the quantity 
 be reduced to one hundred millions by the arrival 
 of pay day, will (other conditions remaining the 
 same) find the horse but sufficient to pay half the 
 debt and the other half must either be paid out of 
 his other means, and thereby become a clear loss 
 to him, or go unpaid and thereby become a clear 
 loss to the creditor. 
 
 What I have here said of a single case of the 
 
128 Money, Gteenbacks, Silver and Gold 
 
 purchase of a horse will hold good in every case 
 of debt existing at the time a reduction in the quan- 
 tity of money occurs, by whomsoever and for what- 
 soever it may have been contracted. It may be said 
 that what the debtor loses the creditor gains by this 
 operation, but on examination this will be found 
 true only to a very limited extent. It is more gen- 
 erally true that all lose by it — the creditor losing 
 more of his debts than he gains by the increased 
 value of those he collects; the debtor by either 
 parting with more of his property to pay his debts 
 than he received in contracting them, or by entirely 
 breaking up his business, and thereby being thrown 
 upon the world in idleness. 
 
 The general distress thus created will, to be 
 sure, be temporary, because whatever change may 
 occur in the quantity of money in any community, 
 time will adjust the derangement produced, but 
 while adjustment is progressing all suffer more or 
 less and very many lose everything that renders 
 life desirable. 
 
 179 
 
 (June 20, 1848, Speecb at Springfield, 111.— Raymond, p. 36.) 
 
 I would not borrow money. I am against an 
 overwhelming crushing system. Suppose that at 
 each session Congress shall first determine how 
 much money can, for that year, be spared for im- 
 provements; then apportion that sum to the most 
 
Money, Greenbacks, Silver and Gold 129 
 
 important objects. * * * xhe prelimited 
 amount of means will save us from doing too much 
 and the statistics will save us from doing what we 
 do in the wrong places. 
 
 180 
 
 (December 20. 1839, Speech at Springfield, 111., Speaking ot the 
 reports to the Secretary of the Treasury.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 28.) 
 
 Reports to be sure lie will have, but reports 
 are often false, and always false when made 
 by a knave to cloak his knavery. Long ex- 
 perience has shown that nothing short of an actual 
 demand of the money will expose an adroit pecu- 
 lator. Ask him for reports, and he will give them 
 to your heart's content; send agents to examine 
 and count the money in his hands, and he will bor- 
 row of a friend, merely to be counted and then re- 
 turned, a sufficient sum to make the sum square. 
 Try what you will, it will all fail till you demand 
 the money; then, and not till then, the truth will 
 come. 
 
 181 
 
 (April 14, 1865, Message to Miners of the West— Barrett, p. 836.) 
 
 Mr. Colfax, I want you to take a message from 
 me to the miners whom you visit. I have very large 
 ideas of the mineral wealth of our nation. I believe 
 it is practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over 
 
130 Money, Greenbacks, Silver and Gold 
 
 the Western country from the Rocky Mountains to 
 the Pacific and its development has scarcely com- 
 menced. 
 
 During the war while we were adding a couple 
 million dollars every day to our debt, I did not care 
 about encouraging the increase in the volume of 
 our precious metals. We had the country to save 
 first. But now that the Rebellion is overthrown, 
 and we know pretty nearly the amount of our na- 
 tional debt, the more gold and silver we mine, we 
 make the payment of that debt so much the easier. 
 Now, I am going to encourage that in every pos- 
 sible way. We shall have hundreds of thousands 
 of disbanded soldiers, and many have feared that 
 their return home in such great numbers might 
 paralyze industry by furnishing suddenly a greater 
 supply of labor than there will be demand for. I 
 am going to try and attract them to the hidden 
 wealth of our mountain ranges, where there is room 
 enough for all. Immigration, which even during 
 the war has not stopped, will land on our shores 
 hundreds of thousands more, per year, from over- 
 crowded Europe. I intend to point them to the gold 
 and silver that wait for them in the West. 
 
 Tell the miners for me that I shall promote 
 their interest to the utmost of my ability, because 
 their prosperity is the prosperity of the nation, and 
 we shall prove in a very few years that we are indeed 
 the treasury of the world. 
 
Money, Greenbacks, Silver and Gold 131 
 
 182 
 
 (April 14, 1865, To Schuyler Colfax— Coffin, p. 615.) 
 
 You are going to the Pacific coast (said Mr. 
 Lincoln to Mr. Colfax, just as he started for Ford's 
 theater). Do not forget to tell the people in the 
 mining regions what I told you this morning about 
 their development. Good-bye. 
 
 183 
 
 (Conversation with Ward Hill Lamon— Recollections by Lamon, 
 p. 215. Gives description ot making greenbacks.) 
 
 Yes, I think it is about — as the lawyer would 
 say — in the following manner, to-wit: The engraver 
 strikes off the sheets, passes them over to the regis- 
 ter of currency, who places his earmarks upon them, 
 signs them, hands them over to Father Spinner, who 
 then places his wonderful signature at the bottom 
 and turns them over to Mr. Chase, who, as secretary 
 of the United States treasury, issues them to the 
 public as money^-and may the good Lord help any 
 fellow that doesn't take all he can honestly get of 
 them. 
 
 184 
 
 (December, 1864, Letter to Edmund D. Taylor, oJ Chicago, 111.— 
 Van Buren, p. 404.) 
 
 My Dear Colonel Dick : I have long determined 
 to make public the origin of the greenback and tell 
 the world that it is one of Dick Taylor's creations. 
 
132 Money, Greenbacks, Silver and Gold 
 
 You have always been friendly to me and when 
 troublous times fell upon us and my shoulders, 
 though broad and willing, were weak, and myself 
 surrounded by such circumstances and such people 
 that I knew not whom to trust; then I said in my 
 extremity, "I will send for Col. Taylor, he will 
 know what to do." I think it was in January, 1862, 
 on or about the i6th, that I did so. You came and 
 I said to you "What can we do?" Said you: "Why, 
 issue treasury notes, bearing no interest, printed on 
 the best banking paper. Issue enough to pay off the 
 army expenses and declare it legal tender." Chase 
 thought it a hazardous thing, but we finally accom- 
 plished it and gave it to the people of this republic, 
 the greatest blessing they ever had — their own 
 paper to pay their own debts. 
 
 It is due to you, the father of. the present green- 
 back, -that the people should know it, and I take 
 great pleasure in making it known. How many 
 times have I laughed at you telling me plainly that 
 I was too lazy to be anything but a lawyer. Yours 
 truly. A. Lincoln, President. 
 
 IS3 
 
 (November 21, 1864, Wm. F. Elkin— Shibley, p. 282.) 
 
 Yes, we may all congratulate ourselves that this 
 cruel war is nearing its close. It has cost a vast 
 amount of treasure and blood. The best blood of 
 
Money, Greenbacks, Stiver and Gola 133 
 
 the flower of American youth has been freely ofifered 
 upon our country's altar that the nation might live. 
 It has been indeed a trying hour for the republic; 
 but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that 
 unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety 
 of my country. 
 
 As a result of the war, corporations have been 
 enthroned and an era of corruption in high places 
 will follow, and the money power of the country 
 will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon 
 the prejudices of the people until all wealth is ag- 
 gregated in a few hands, and the Republic is de- 
 stroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for 
 the safety of my country than ever before, even in 
 the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may 
 prove groundless. 
 
TARIFF. 
 186 
 
 (May 12, 1860, Letter to Dr. Edward Wallace— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I. p. 634.) 
 
 I now think the tariff question ought not to be 
 agitated at the Chicago convention, but that all 
 should be satisfied on that point with a Presidential 
 candidate whose antecedents give assurance that 
 he would neither seek to force a tariff law by execu- 
 tive influence, nor yet to arrest a reasonable one by 
 a veto or otherwise. Just such a candidate I desire 
 shall be put in nomination. 
 
 187 
 
 (October 11, 1859, Letter to Dr. Edward Wallace— Complete Worka, 
 Vol. I. p. 584.) 
 
 I have not since changed my views. I believe yet, 
 if we could have a moderate, carefully adjusted pro- 
 tective tariff, so far acquiesced in as not to be a per- 
 petual subject of political strife, squabbles, changes, 
 and uncertainties it would be better for us. Still it 
 is my opinion that just now the revival of that ques- 
 tion will not advance the cause itself or the man 
 who revives it. 
 
 135 
 
136 Tariff 
 
 188 
 
 (February 15, 1861, Speech at Pittsburg, Pa.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 679.) 
 
 We should do neither more nor less than we 
 gave the people reason to believe we would when 
 they gave us their votes. * * * J therefore 
 would rather recommend to every gentleman who 
 knows he is to be a member of the next Congress 
 to take an enlarged view, and post himself thor- 
 oughly so as to contribute his part to such an 
 adjustment of the tariff as shall produce a sufficient 
 revenue, and in its other bearings, so far as possible, 
 be just and equal to all sections of the country 
 and classes of the people. 
 
 189 
 
 (Marcb 6, 1860, Speech at New Haven, Conn.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 617.) 
 
 The old question of tariff — a matter that will 
 remain one of the chief affairs of national house- 
 keeping to aU time; the question of the manage- 
 ment of financial affairs; the question of the dis- 
 position of the public domain; how shall it be 
 managed for the purpose of getting it well settled, 
 and of making there the homes of a free and happy 
 people — ^these will remain open and require atten- 
 tion for a great while yet, and these questions will 
 have to be attended to by whatever party has the 
 control of the government. 
 
Tariff 137 
 
 190 
 
 (February 15, 1861, Speech at Pittsburg, Pa.— Van Buren, p. 28.) 
 
 Assuming that direct taxation is not to be 
 adopted, the tariff question must be as durable as 
 the government itself. It is a question of national 
 housekeeping. It is to the government what re- 
 plenishing the meal-tub is to the family. Ever- 
 varying circumstances will require frequent modi- 
 fications as to the amount needed and the sources 
 of supply. So far there is little difference of opinion 
 among the people. * * * i therefore would 
 rather recommend to every gentleman who knows 
 he is to be a member of the next Congress to take 
 an enlarged view and post himself thoroughly so 
 as to contribute his part to such an adjustment of 
 the tariff as shall produce a sufficient revenue, and, 
 in its other bearings, so far as possible, be just and 
 equal to all sections of the country and classes of 
 the people. 
 
PARTY POLICY. 
 191 
 
 0.861, Interview with Senator Maynard— Herndon, p. 508.) 
 
 I shall go just as fast and only as fast as I 
 think I'm right and the people are ready for the 
 step. 
 
 192 
 
 (November 20, 1863, In letter to Z. Chandler— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II, p. 440.) 
 
 I hope to "stand firm" enough not to go back- 
 ward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck 
 the country's cau'-e. 
 
 193 
 
 (July 28, 1859, From letter to S. Galloway— Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, p. 537.) 
 
 No party can command respect which sustains /y 
 this year what it opposed last. 
 
 194 
 
 (Hapgood, p. 351— In regard to political quarrels.) 
 
 I am in favor of short statutes of limitations in A, 
 politics. 
 
 195 
 
 (June 6, 1864, Indorsement on Letter— Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 
 528.) 
 
 I wish not to interfere about vice-president. 
 
 139 
 
l^o Party Policy 
 
 Cannot interfere about platform. Convention must 
 judge for itself. 
 
 196 
 
 (September 17, 1S5S, Answer to friends who advised him not to use 
 the famous sentence, "A bouse divided against itself cannot 
 stand."— Herndon, p. 400.) 
 
 If it is decreed that I should go down because of 
 this speech, then let me go down linked to the 
 truth — let me die in the advocacy of what is just 
 and right. 
 
 197 
 
 (June, 1856, Speech at Springfield, 111., in ratification meeting of 
 the Bloomington Convention— two other persons only, being 
 present.- Herndon, p. 386.) 
 
 While all seems dead, the age itself is not. It 
 liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this 
 seeming want of life and motion, the world does 
 move nevertheless. Be hopeful, and now let us 
 adjourn and appeal to the. people. 
 
 198 
 
 (1855, Advice to Free-Soilers of Springfield, 111., who talked of 
 using force.— Herndon, p. 380.) 
 
 You can better succeed with the ballot. You 
 can peaceably then redeem the government and pre- 
 serve the liberties of mankind through your votes 
 and voice and moral influence. * * * Let there 
 be peace. Revolutionize through the ballot-box, 
 and restore the government once more to the affec- 
 tions and hearts of men by making it express, as it 
 
Party Policy i^i 
 
 was intended to do, the highest spirit of justice and 
 liberty. 
 
 199 
 
 (May 29, 1856, Speech at Bloomington Convention— Lite of Lincoln, 
 Tarbell, Vol. I, p. 298.) 
 
 In grave emergencies moderation is generally 
 safer than radicalism. * * * As it now stands 
 we must appeal to the sober sense and patriotism 
 of the people. We will make converts day by day; 
 we will grow stronger by calmness and moderation ; 
 we will grow strong by. the violence and injustice of 
 our adversaries; and unless truth be a mockery 
 and justice a hollow lie we will be in the majority 
 after awhile, and then the revolution which we will 
 accomplish will be none the less radical from 
 being the result of pacific measures. 
 
 200 
 
 (March 6, 1860, Speech at New Haven, Conn.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 620.) 
 
 If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, 
 any man would say I might seize the nearest stick 
 and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with 
 my children, that would be another question. I 
 might hurt the children more than the snake, and 
 it might bite them. Much more, if I found it in 
 bed with my neighbor's children, and I had bound 
 myself by a solemn compact not to meddle with his 
 children under any circumstances, it would become 
 
142 Party Policy 
 
 me to let that particular mode of getting rid of the 
 gentleman alone. But if there was a bed newly 
 made up, to which the children were to be taken, 
 and it was proposed to take a batch of young snakes 
 and put them there with them, I take it no man 
 would say there was any question how I ought to 
 decide. 
 
 201 
 
 (In Regard to Appointments— Hapgood, p. 349.) 
 
 I suppose that if the twelve apostles were to be 
 chosen nowadays, the shrieks of locality would 
 have to be heeded. 
 
 202 
 
 (March 1, 1859, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Complete Works, Vol. I, 
 p. 528.) 
 
 I am afraid of the result upon organized action 
 where great results are in view, if any of us allow 
 ourselves to seek out minor or separate points, on 
 which there may be difference of views as to policy 
 and right, and let them keep us from uniting in 
 action upon a great principle in a cause on which 
 we all agree; or are deluded into the belief that 
 all can be brought to consider alike and agree upon 
 every minor point before we unite and press for- 
 ward in organization, asking the co-operation of all 
 good men in that resistance to slavery upon which 
 we all agree. I am afraid that such methods would 
 
Patty Polity 143 
 
 result in keeping the friends of liberty waiting long- 
 er than we ought to. I say this for the purpose of 
 suggesting that we consider whether it would not be 
 better and wiser, so long as we all agree that this 
 matter of slavery is a moral, political and social 
 wrong, and ought to be treated as a wrong, not to 
 let anything minor or subsidiary to that main prin- 
 ciple and purpose make us fail to co-operate. 
 
 203 
 
 (February 27, 1860, Speech at Cooper Institute, New York— How- 
 ells, p. 213.) 
 
 Let US be diverted by none of those sophistical 
 contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied 
 and belabored — contrivances such as groping for 
 some middle ground between the right and the 
 wrong; vain as the search for a man who should 
 be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a 
 policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all 
 true men do care ; such as union appeals beseeching 
 true men to yield to disunionists, reversing the 
 divine rule, and calling not the sinners but the 
 righteous to repentance; such as invocations to 
 Washington, imploring men to unsay what Wash- 
 ington said, and undo what Washington did. 
 Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false 
 accusations against us, nor frightened from it by 
 menaces of destruction to the government, nor of 
 dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right 
 
 V 
 
.144 Party Policy 
 
 makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare 
 to do our duty as we understand it. 
 
 204 
 
 (June 9, 1864, From Reply to a Belegation from the National 
 Union League— Hapgood, p. 352.) 
 
 I do not allow myself to suppose that either the 
 convention or the League have concluded to decide 
 that I am either the greatest or best man in America, 
 but rather they have concluded that it is not- best 
 to swap horses while crossing the river, and have 
 further concluded that I am not so poor a horse 
 that they might not make a botch of it in trying to 
 swap. 
 
 205 
 
 (November 19, 1858, From Letter to A. G. Henry — Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 521.) 
 
 As a general rule, out of Sangamon as well as 
 in it, much of the plain old Democracy is with us, 
 while nearly all the old exclusive silk-stocking whig- 
 gery is against us. I don't mean nearly all the Old 
 Whig party, but nearly all of the nice exclusive sort. 
 
 206 
 
 (June 12, 1848, From Letter to Archibald Williams -Complete 
 Works, Vol. I, p. 122.) 
 
 In my opinion we shall have a most overwhelm- 
 ing, glorious triumph. One unmistakable sign is 
 that all the odds and ends are with us — barnburners. 
 
Parly Policy 145 
 
 native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office- 
 seeking locofocos, and the Lord knows what. 
 
 207 
 
 (July 6, 1859, From Letter to Schuyler Colfax — Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 635.) 
 
 In a word, in every locality we should look be- 
 3-ond our noses; and at least say nothing on points 
 where it is probable we shall disagree. 
 
 208 
 
 (February 27, 1860, Cooper Institute Speech, New York— Howells, 
 p. 201.) 
 
 The fact that we get no votes in your section is 
 a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if 
 there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily 
 yours, and remains so until you show that we repel 
 you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do 
 repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the 
 fault is ours; but this brings you to where you 
 ought to have started — to a discussion of the right 
 or wrong of our principle. 
 
 209 
 
 (June 22, 1848, From Letter to William H. Herndon— Herndon, 
 p. 284.) 
 
 Now, as to the young men. You must not wait 
 to be brought forward by the older men. For in- 
 stance, do you suppose that I should ever have got 
 into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and 
 
146 Patty Policy 
 
 pushed forward by older men? You young men 
 get together and form a "Rough and Ready Club," 
 and have regular meetings and speeches. Take in 
 everybody you can get. * * * ^s yQ^ gQ along 
 gather up all the shrewd, wild boys about town, 
 whether just of age or a little under age. * * * 
 Let every one play the part he can play best — some 
 speak, some sing and all halloo. 
 
 210 
 
 (February 22, 1842, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 59.) 
 
 When the conduct of men is designed to be in- 
 fluenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion 
 should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true 
 maxim, 'That a drop of honey catches more flies 
 than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would 
 win a man to your cause, first convince him that 
 you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of 
 honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, 
 is the great high road to his reason and which when 
 once gained, you will find but little trouble in con- 
 vincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, 
 if indeed that cause really be a just one. 
 
 211 
 
 (May 14, 1S59, Letter to M. W. Delahay— Herndon, p. 451.) 
 
 You will probably adopt resolutions in the nature 
 of a platform. I think the only temptation will be 
 to lower the Republican standard in order to gather 
 
Party Policy 147 
 
 recruits. In my judgment such a step would be 
 a serious mistake, and open a gap through which 
 more would pass out than pass in. And this would 
 be the same whether the letting down should be in 
 deference to Douglasism or to the Southern oppo- 
 sition element; either would surrender the object' 
 of the Republican organization — the preventing of 
 the spread and nationalization of slavery. This ob- 
 ject surrendered, the organization would go to 
 pieces. I do not mean by this that no Southern man 
 must be placed upon our national ticket in i860. 
 There are many men in the slave States for any one 
 of whom I could cheerfully vote to be either Presi- 
 dent or Vice-President, provided he would enable 
 me to do so with safety to the Republican cause, 
 without lowering the Republican standard. This 
 is the indispensable condition of a union with us; 
 it is idle to talk of any other. Any other would be 
 as fruitless to the South as distasteful to the North, 
 the whole ending in common defeat. Let a union 
 be attempted on the basis of ignoring the sla\ery 
 question, and magnifying other questions, which 
 the people are just now not caring about, and it 
 will result in gaining no single electoral vote in the 
 South and losing every one in the North. 
 
 212 
 
 (August 22, 1862, Letter to Horace Greeley— Hanaford, p. 241.) 
 
 My paramount object is to save the Union and 
 
148 Party Policy 
 
 not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could 
 save the Union without freeing any slaves I virould 
 do it, if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I 
 would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some 
 and leaving others alone I would also do that. * * 
 I shall try to correct errors when shown to be 
 errors, and I shall adopt new views so fast as they 
 shall appear to be true views. I have here stated 
 my purpose according to my views of official duty, 
 and I intend no modification of my oft expressed 
 personal wish that all men everywhere could be 
 free. 
 
 213 
 
 (To a DelegaticQ o£ Ministers — Hapgood, p. 216.) 
 
 Gentlemen : Suppose all the property you possess 
 were in gold and you had placed it in the hands of 
 Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a 
 rope. With slow, cautious, steady step he walks 
 the rope bearing your all. Would you shake the 
 cable and keep shouting to him, "Blondin, stand 
 up a little straighter ;" "Blondin, stoop a little more ; 
 go a little faster; lean more to the south, now lean 
 a little more to the north," — would that be your 
 behavior in such an emergency? No. You would 
 hold your breath, every one of you, as well as your 
 tongues. You would keep your hands off until he 
 was safe on the other side. This government, gen- 
 
Paity Policy i^g 
 
 tlemen, is carrying an immense weight, untold treas- 
 ures are in its hands. The persons managing the 
 Ship of State in this storm are doing the best they 
 can. Don't worry them with needless warnings and 
 complaints. Keep silence, be patient, and we will 
 get you safe across. 
 
 214 
 
 (February 27, 1860, Speech at Cooper Institute, New York— How- 
 ells, p. 202.) 
 
 But you say you are conservative — eminently con- 
 servative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, 
 or something of the sort. What is conservatism? 
 Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the 
 new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the 
 identical old policy on the point in controversy, 
 which w^s adopted by "our fathers who framed the 
 government under which we live," while you with 
 one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old 
 policy, and insist upon substituting something new. 
 
 215 
 
 (March 6, 1860, Speech at New Haven, Conn.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 622.) 
 
 You say you think slavery a wrong, but you re- 
 nounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything 
 else that you think wrong, that you are not willing 
 to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so careful, 
 so tender of this one wrong and no other? You 
 will not let us do a single thing as if it was a wrong; 
 
ISO Party Policy 
 
 there is no place where you will allow it to be even 
 called wrong. We must not call it wrong in the 
 free States, because it is not there, and we must not 
 call it wrong in the slave States, because it is there; 
 we must not call it wrong in politics, because that is 
 bringing morality into politics, and we must not 
 call it wrong in the pulpit, because that is bringing 
 politics into reUgion; we must not bring it into 
 the Tract Society, or other societies, because those 
 are such unsuitable places, and there is no single 
 place, according to you, where this wrong thing can 
 properly be called wrong. 
 
 216 
 
 (February 27, 1860, Speech at Cooper Institute, New York— How- 
 ells, p. 203.) 
 
 Again you say we have made the slavery ques- 
 tion more prominent than it formerly was. We 
 deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but 
 we deny that we made it so. It was not we but you, 
 who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We 
 resisted, and still resist your innovation ; and thence 
 comes the greater prominence of the question. 
 Would you have that question reduced to its former 
 proportions? Go back to that old policy. What 
 has been will be again, under the same conditions. 
 If you would have the peace of the old times, re- 
 adopt the precepts and poUcy of the old time. 
 
Party Policy 151 
 
 217 
 
 (July 10, 1858, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Debates, p. 22.) 
 
 You have done the labor; maintain it — keep it. 
 If men choose to serve you, go with them; but as 
 you have made up your organization upon principle, 
 stand by it; for as surely as God reigns over you 
 and has inspired your mind, and given you a sense 
 of propriety, and continues to give you hope, so 
 surely will you still cling to these ideas, and you 
 will at last come back again after your wanderings, 
 merely to do your work over again. 
 
 218 
 
 (December 1-5, 1859, Speeches in Kansas— Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, p. 693.) 
 
 To effect our main object we have to employ 
 auxiliary means. We must hold conventions, adopt 
 platforms, select candidates and carry elections. At 
 every step we must be true to the main purpose. If 
 we adopt a platform falling short of our principle, 
 or elect a man rejecting our principle, we not only 
 take nothing affirmative by our success, but we 
 draw upon us the positive embarrassment of seem- 
 ing ourselves to have abandoned our principle. 
 
 That our principle, however baffled or delayed, 
 will finally triumph, I do not permit myself to doubt. 
 Men will pass away — die, die politically and natur- 
 ally; but the principle will live and live forever. 
 
152 Party Policy 
 
 Organizations rallied around that principle may, by 
 their own dereliction, go to pieces, thereby losing 
 all their time and labor; but the principle will re- 
 main, and will reproduce another, and another till 
 the final triumph will come. But to bring it soon 
 we must save our labor already performed — our 
 organization, which has cost us so much time and 
 toil to create. 
 
 We must keep our principle constantly in view, 
 and never be false to it. 
 
 And as to men for leaders, we must remember 
 that, 'He that is not for us is against us, and he 
 that gathereth not with us scattereth.' 
 
 219 
 
 (September 17, 1859, Speech at Cincinnati, O.— Debates, p. 268.) 
 
 To do these things we must employ instrumen- 
 talities. We must hold conventions ; we must adopt 
 platforms, if we conform to ordinary custom; we 
 must nominate candidates ; and we must carry elec- 
 tions. In all these things I think that we ought to 
 keep in view our real purpose, and in none do any- 
 thing that stands adverse to our purpose. If we 
 shall adopt a platform that fails to recognize or ex- 
 press our purpose, or elect a man that declares him- 
 self inimical to our purpose^ we not only take noth- 
 ing by our success, but we tacitly admit that we act 
 upon no other principle than a desire to have 'the 
 
Party Policy 153 
 
 loaves and fishes, by which, in the end, our appar- 
 ent success is really an injury to us. 
 
 I know that it is very desirable with me, as with 
 everybody else, that all the elements of the oppo- 
 sition shall unite in the next presidential election, 
 and in all future time. I am anxious that that 
 should be, but there are things seriously to be con- 
 sidered in relation to that matter. If the terms can 
 be arranged, I am in favor of the union. But sup- 
 pose we shall take up some man, and put him on 
 one end or the other of the ticket, who declares him- 
 self against us in regard to the prevention of the 
 spread of slavery, who turns up his nose and says 
 he is tired of hearing anything more about it, who 
 is more against us than against the enemy — what 
 will be the issue? Why, he will get no slave States 
 after all — he has tried that already until being beat 
 is the rule for him. If we nominate him upon that 
 ground, he will not carry a slave State, and not only 
 so, but that portion of our men who are high strung 
 upon the principle we really fight for will not go 
 for him, and he won't get a single electoral vote any- 
 where, except, perhaps, in the State of Maryland. 
 There is no use in saying to us that we are stubborn 
 and obstinate because we won't do some such thing 
 as this. We cannot do it. We cannot get our men 
 to vote it. I speak by the card, that we cannot 
 give the State of Illinois in such case by fifty thou- 
 
154 Party Policy 
 
 sand. * * * After saying this much, let me say 
 a little on the other side. There are plenty of men 
 in the slave States that are altogether good enough 
 for me to be either President or Vice-President, 
 provided they will profess their sympathy with our 
 purpose, and will place themselves on the ground 
 that our men, upon principle, can vote for them. 
 There are scores of them — good men in their char- 
 acter for intelligence, and talent, and integrity. If 
 such a one will place himself upon the right ground, 
 I am for his occupying one place upon the next 
 Republican or Opposition ticket. I will heartily go 
 for him. But unless he does so place himself, I 
 think it a matter of perfect nonsense to attempt to 
 bring about a union upon any other basis; that if 
 a union be made, the elements will scatter so that 
 there can be no success for such a ticket, nor any- 
 thing like success. The good old maxims of the 
 Bible are applicable, and truly applicable to human 
 affairs, and in this, as in other things, we may say 
 here that "he who is not for us is against us ; he who 
 gathereth not with us scattereth." 
 
 220 
 
 (June 17, 1S68, Speech at Springfleld, 111., State Convention— De- 
 bates, p. 5.) 
 
 Our cause, then, must be entrusted to, and con- 
 ducted by, its own undoubted friends — those whose 
 hands are free, whose hearts are in the work, who 
 
Party Policy 155 
 
 do care for results. Two years ago the Republicans 
 of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thou- 
 sand strong. We did this under the single impulse 
 of resistance to a common danger, with every ex- 
 ternal circumstance against us. Of strange, dis- 
 cordant and even hostile elements we gathered from 
 the four winds, and formed and fought the battle 
 through, under the constant, hot fire of a disci- 
 plined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave 
 all then to falter now? — now, when that same enemy 
 is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The re- 
 sult is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand 
 firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may acceler- 
 ate or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the 
 victory is sure too come. 
 
 221 
 
 (Marclj 1, 1859, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Complete Works, Vol. I, 
 p. 53L) 
 
 If we do not allow ourselves to be. allured from 
 the strict path of our duty by such a device as shift- 
 ing our ground and throwing us into the rear of a 
 leader who denies our first principles, 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. You Republicans of 
 Illinois have deliberately taken your ground; you 
 have heard the whole subject discussed again and 
 again ; you have stated your faith in platforms laid 
 
156 Party Policy 
 
 down in a State convention and in a national con- 
 vention; you have heard and talked over and con- 
 sidered it until you are now all of opinion that you 
 are on a ground of unquestionable right. All you 
 have to do is to keep the faith, to rernain steadfast 
 to the right, to stand by your banner. Nothing 
 should lead you to leave your guns. Stand together, 
 ready, with match in hand. Allow nothing to turn 
 you to the right or the left. Remember how long 
 you have been in setting out on the true course; 
 how long you have been in getting your neighbors 
 to understand and believe as you now do. Stand 
 by your principles ; stand by your guns, and victory, 
 complete and permanent, is sure at the last. 
 
 222 
 
 (March 1, 1859, Speech at Chicago, 111.— Complete Works, Vol. I, 
 p. 529.) 
 
 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 to-day be no Republican party in this 
 Union. I believe that the principles around which 
 we rallied and organized that party would live ; they 
 will live under all circumstances, while we die. They 
 would produce another party in the future. But in 
 the mean time all the labor that has been done to 
 
Party Polity 157 
 
 build up the present Republican party would be 
 entirely lost, and perhaps twenty years of time, be- 
 fore we would again have formed around that prin- 
 ciple as solid, extensive and formidable an organi- 
 zation as we have, standing shoulder to shoulder, 
 to-night, in harmony and strength around the Re- 
 publican banner. 
 
 223 
 
 (December 1-5, 1859, Speeches in Kansas — Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, p. 592.) 
 
 The St. Louis "Intelligencer" is out in favor of 
 a good man for President, to be run without a 
 platform. Well, I am not wedded to the formal 
 written platform system, but a thousand to one the 
 editor is not himself in favor of his plan, except, 
 with the qualification that he and his sort are to 
 select and name the "good man." To bring him to 
 the test, is he willing to take Seward without a plat- 
 form? Oh, no; Seward's antecedents exclude him, 
 say you. Well, is your good man without antece- 
 dents? If he is, how shall the nation know that he 
 is a good man? The sum of the matter is that, in 
 the absence of formal written platforms, the ante- 
 cedents of candidates become their platform. On 
 just such platforms all our earlier and better Presi- 
 dents were elected, but this by no means facilitates 
 a union of men who differ in principles. 
 
158 Party Policy 
 
 224 
 
 (October 16, 1854, Speech at Peoria, 111.— Howells, p. 302.) 
 
 Our senator also objects that those who oppose 
 him in this matter do not entirely agree with one 
 another. He reminds me that in my firm adherence 
 to the Constitutional rights of the slave States^ I 
 differ widely from others who are co-operating 
 with me in opposing the Nebraska bill, and he says 
 it is not quite fair to oppose him in this variety of 
 ways. He should remember that he took us by sur- 
 prise — astounded us by. this measure. We were 
 thunderstruck and stunned, and we reeled and fell 
 in utter confusion. But we arose, each fighting, 
 grasping whatever he could first reach — a scythe, a 
 pitchfork, a chopping ax, or a butcher's cleaver. 
 We struck in the direction of the sound, and we 
 were rapidly closing in upon him. He must not 
 think to divert us from our purpose by showing us 
 that our drill, our dress and our weapons are not 
 entirely perfect and uniform. When the storm shall 
 be past he shall find us still Americans no less de- 
 voted to the continued union and prosperity of the 
 country than heretofore. 
 
 225 
 
 oomingto 
 a, p. 93.: 
 
 Let us, in building our new party, plant ourselves 
 
 (May 29, 1856, Speech at Bloomington, 111., at the formation of 
 . party in the State— Arnold, p. 93.) 
 
Party Policy 159 
 
 on the rock of the Declaration of Independence and 
 the gates of hell shall not be able to prevail 
 against us. 
 
 226 
 
 (October 16, 1854, Speech at Peoria, 111., concerning fusion— Bar- 
 rett, p. 127.) 
 
 Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with 
 him v/hile he is right and part with him when he 
 goes wrong. 
 
MISCELLA.NY— WAR, PEACE, TEMPER- 
 ANCE, EMANCIPATION. 
 227 
 
 (1856, Brief Address to Springfield Abolitionists— Irelan,Vol.xviI, 
 p. 6S3.) 
 
 Friends: I agree with you in providence, but I 
 believe in the providence of the most men, — the 
 longest purse and the largest cannon. 
 
 228 
 
 (April 4, 1864, Letter to Hodges— Barrett, p. 481.) 
 
 I claim not to have controlled events, but confess 
 plainly that events have controlled me. 
 
 229 
 
 (December 1, 1862, Annual Message— Van Buren, p. 233.) 
 
 In times like the present, men should utter noth- 
 ing for which they would not willingly be responsi- 
 ble through time and in eternity. 
 
 230 
 
 (December 20, 1839, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 26.) 
 
 What has once happened will invariably happen 
 again when the same circumstances which combined 
 to produce it shall again combine in the same way. 
 
 161 
 
1 62 Miscellany — War, Peace, 
 
 231 
 
 (March 9, 1832, Address to the People of Sangamon County, 
 111— Irelan, Vol. XVI, p. 102.) 
 
 Holding it a sound maxim that it is better only 
 sometimes to be right than at all times wrong, so 
 soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous I 
 shall be ready to renounce them. 
 
 232 
 
 (March 1, 1864, Letter to Secretary Stanton— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II, p. 490.) 
 
 I do not like this punishment of withholding pay : 
 it falls so very hard on poor families. 
 
 233 
 
 (February 5, 1864, Note to Secretary of War— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II, p. 478.) 
 
 On principle I dislike an oath which requires a 
 man to swear he has done no wrong. It rejects the 
 Christian principle of forgiveness on terms of re- 
 pentance. I think it is enough if the man does no 
 wrong hereafter. 
 
 234 
 
 (Coffin, p. 89.) 
 
 All questions of social and moral reform find 
 lodgment first with enlightened souls, who stamp 
 them with their approval. lit God's own time they 
 will be organized into law, and thus woven into the 
 fabric of our institutions. 
 
Temperance, EmandtaHon 163 
 
 235 
 
 (February U, 1861, Speech on Leaving Springfield for Washing- 
 ton— Herndon, p. 4S6.) 
 
 My friends: No one, not in my situation, can 
 appreciate my feelings of sadness at this parting. 
 To this place, and the kindness of these people, I 
 owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a 
 century, and have passed from a young to an old 
 man. Here my children have been born, and one is 
 buried. I now leave not knowing when or whether 
 ever I may return, with a task before me greater 
 than that which rested upon Washington. Without 
 the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attend- 
 ed him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I 
 cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, 
 and remain with you; and be everywhere for good, 
 let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To 
 His care commending you, as I hope in your 
 prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affec- 
 tionate farewell. 
 
 236 
 
 (March 4, 1861, First Inaugural — Van Buren, p. 61.) 
 
 I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but 
 friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion 
 may have strained, it must not break our bonds of 
 affection. The mystic cords of memory, stretching 
 from every battlefield and patriot grave to every Uv- 
 ing heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, 
 
164 Miscellany — War, Peace, 
 
 will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again 
 touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels 
 of our nature. 
 
 237 
 
 (August 26, 1863, Letter to James C. Conkling— Herndon, p. 555.) 
 
 For the great republic — for the principle it lives 
 by and keeps alive — ^for man's vast future — thanks 
 to all. 
 
 238 
 
 (August 15, 1864, From Interview with John T. Mills— Complete 
 Works, Vol. U, p. 562.) 
 
 There have been men base enough to propose to 
 me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port 
 Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of 
 the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should 
 deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come 
 what will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe. 
 
 239 
 
 (May 30, 1864, Letter to J. H. Bryant in reference to Owen Love- 
 joy— Complete Works, Vol. II, p. 526.) 
 
 My personal acquaintance with him commenced 
 only about ten years ago, since when it has been 
 quite intimate, and every step in it has been one of 
 increasing respect and esteem, ending with his life, 
 in no less than aflfection on my part. It can be truly 
 said of him that while he was personally ambitious 
 he bravely endured the obscurity which the unpopu- 
 
Temperance, Emancipation 165 
 
 larity of his principles imposed, and never accepted 
 official honors until those honors were ready to 
 admit his principles with him. Throughout very 
 heavy and perplexing responsibilities here, to the 
 day of his death, it would scarcely wrong any other 
 to say he was my most generous friend. 
 
 Let him have the marble monument along with 
 the well-assured and more enduring one in the 
 hearts of those who love liberty unselfishly for all 
 men. 
 
 240 
 
 (January 2, 1863, Letter to General S. R. Curtis— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II, p. 291.) 
 
 The United States government must not, as 
 by this order, undertake to run the churches. 
 When an individual in a church or out 
 -of it becomes dangerous to the public interest, he 
 must be checked; but let the churches, as such, 
 take care of themselves. It will not do for the 
 United States to appoint trustees, supervisors, or 
 other agents for the churches. 
 
 241 
 
 (February 11, 1864, Note to Secretary Stanton— Complete Works, 
 Vol. II, p. 480.) 
 
 I have never interfered nor thought of interfering 
 • as to who shall or who shall not preach in any 
 church ; nor have I knowingly or believingly toler- 
 ated any one else to so interfere by my authority. 
 
1 66 Miscellany — War, Peace, 
 
 If any one is so interfering by color of my authority, 
 I would like to have it specifically made known to 
 me. * * * I will not have control of any church 
 on any side. 
 
 242 
 
 (July 16, 1852, Speech at Springfield, 111.— Complete Works, Vol. 
 I, p. 176.) 
 
 Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and 
 his hosts were lost in the Red Sea, for striving to 
 retain a captive people who had already served them 
 more than four hundred years. May like disasters 
 never befall us. 
 
 243 
 
 1 (July 10, 1848, Letter to W. H. Herndon— Herndon, p. 285.) 
 
 / 
 
 The way for a young man to rise is to improve 
 himself ever}' way he can, never suspecting that 
 anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure 
 you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any 
 man in any situation. There may sometimes be un- 
 generous attempts to keep a young man down ; and 
 they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be 
 diverted from its true channel to brood over the 
 attempted injury. Cast about and see if this feel- 
 ing has not injured every person you have ever 
 known to fall into it. 
 
Tempefance, Emancipation 167 
 
 244 
 
 (February 22, 1S42, From an Address Before the Springfield Wash- 
 Ingtonian Temperance Society— Complete Works, Vol. I, p. 59.) 
 
 When all such of us as have now reached the 
 }-ears of maturity first opened our eyes upon the 
 stage of existence, we found intoxicating liquor 
 recognized by everybody, used by everybody, re- 
 pudiated by nobody. It commonly entered into the 
 first draught of the infant and the last draught of 
 the dying man. From the sideboard of the parson 
 down to the ragged pocket of the houseless loafer 
 it was constantly found. Physicians prescribed it 
 in this, that, and the other disease; government 
 provided it for soldiers and sailors; and to have a 
 rolling or raising, a husking or 'hoedown' any- 
 where about without it was positively insufferable. 
 So, too, it was everywhere a respectable article of 
 manufacture and merchandise. The making of it 
 was regarded as an honorable livelihood, and he 
 who could make most was the most enterprising 
 and respectable. Large and small manufactories of 
 it were everywhere erected, in which all the earthly 
 goods of their owners were invested. Wagons drew 
 it from town to town; boats bore it from clime to 
 clime, and the winds wafted it from nation to nation, 
 and merchants bought and sold it, by the wholesale 
 and retail, with precisely the same feelings on the 
 part of the seller, buyer and bystander as are felt 
 
1 68 Miscellany — War-, Peace, 
 
 at the selling and buying of plows, beef, bacon, or 
 any other of the real necessaries of life. Universal 
 public opinion not only tolerated but recognized 
 and adopted its use. * * * Whether or not the 
 world would be vastly benefited by a total and final 
 banishment from it of all intoxicating drinks seems 
 to me not now an open question. Three-fourths of 
 mankind confess the affirmative with their tongues 
 and I believe all the rest acknowledge it in their 
 hearts. 
 
 245 
 
 (February 22, 1842, Speech at Springfield, III.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 63.) 
 
 Of our political revolution of '7^ we are all 
 justly proud. It has given us a degree of 
 political freedom far exceeding that of any other 
 nation of the earth. In it the world has found a 
 solution of the long mooted problem as to the capa- 
 bility of man to govern himself. In it was the germ 
 which has vegetated, and still 'is to grow and ex- 
 pand into the universal liberty of mankind. * * * 
 Turn now to the temperance revolution. In it we 
 shall find a stronger bondage broken, a viler slavery 
 manumitted, a greater tyrant deposed; in it, more 
 of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow 
 assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows 
 weeping. By it none wounded in feeling, none in- 
 jured in interest; even the dram-maker and dram- 
 
Temperance, Emancipation 169 
 
 seller will have glided into other occupations so 
 gradually as never to have felt the change, and will 
 stand ready to join all others in the universal song 
 of gladness. And what a noble ally this to the 
 cause of political freedom; with such an aid its 
 march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of 
 earth shall drink in rich fruition the sorrow-quench- 
 ing draughts of perfect liberty. Happy day when 
 — all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all 
 matter subjected — mind, all conquering mind, shall 
 live and move, the monarch of the world. Glorious 
 consummation! Hail, fall of fury! Reign of reason, 
 all hail! 
 
 246 
 
 (September 29, 1863, From Reply to Sons ol Temperance — Barrett, 
 p. 827.) 
 
 If I were better known than I am, you would not 
 need to be told that in the advocacy of the cause of 
 temperance you have a friend and sympathizer in 
 me. 
 
 When I was a young man — long ago — before the 
 Sons of Temperance as an organization had an ex- 
 istence — I, in a humble way, made temperance 
 speeches, and I think I may say that to this day I 
 have never, by my example, belied what I then said. 
 * * * I think the reasonable men of the world 
 have long since agreed that intemperance is one of 
 the greatest, if not the very greatest, of all evils 
 
170 Miscellany — War, Peace, 
 
 among mankind. That is not a matter of dispute, 
 I believe. That the disease exists, and that it is a 
 very great one, is agreed upon by all. 
 
 247 
 
 (February 22, 1861, Speecb at Harrisburg, Penn.— Complete Works, 
 Vol. I, p. 692.) 
 
 Allusion has been made to the peaceful princi- 
 ples upon which this great commonwealth was or- 
 iginally settled. Allow me to add my meed of praise 
 to those peaceful principles. I hope no one of the 
 friends who originally settled here, or who lived 
 here since that time, or who lives here now, has 
 been or is a more devoted lover of peace, harmony, 
 and concord than my humble self. 
 
 While I have been proud to see to-day the finest 
 military array, I think, that I have ever seen, allow 
 me to say, in regard to those men, that they give 
 hope of what may be done when war is inevitable. 
 But at the same time, allow me to express the hope 
 that in the shedding of blood their services may 
 never be needed, especially in the shedding of fra- 
 ternal blood. It shall be my endeavor to preserve 
 the peace of this country so far as it can possibly 
 be done consistently with the maintenance of the 
 institutions of the country. With my consent, or 
 without my great displeasure, this country shall 
 never witness the shedding of one drop of blood in 
 fraternal strife. 
 
Temperance, Emancipation 1 7 1 
 
 248 
 
 (June 16, 1864, Speech at Sanitary Fair, Pliiladelpiiia, Penn.— Van 
 Buren, p. 366.) 
 
 War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, 
 in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the 
 most terrible. It has deranged business, totally in 
 many localities and partially in all localities. It has 
 destroyed property and ruined homes; it has pro- 
 duced a national debt and taxation unprecedented, 
 at least in this country ; it has carried mourning to 
 almost every home, until it can almost be said that 
 the "heavens are hung in black." * * * \Yg ^^. 
 cepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and 
 the war will end when the object is attained. Under 
 God, I hope it never will end until that time. Speak- 
 ing of the present campaign. General Grant is re- 
 ported to have said, "I am going through on this 
 line if it takes all summer." This war has taken 
 three years. It was begun or accepted upon the 
 line of restoring the national authority over the 
 whole national domain, and for the American peo- 
 ple, as far as my knowledge enables me to speak, 
 I say we are going through on this line if it takes 
 three years more. 
 
 249 
 
 (January 1, 1863, Irelan, Vol. XVII, p. 246.) 
 
 The Proclamation of Emancipation. 
 Whereas on the twenty-second day of September, 
 
172 MiscellafM — War, Peace, 
 
 in the year of our Lord one thousind eight hun- 
 dred and sixty-two, a proclamation 'was issued by 
 the President of the United Statjes, containing 
 among other things the following, to- wit: 
 
 That on the first day of January, iin the year of 
 our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
 three, all persons held as slaves within any State, 
 or designated part of a State, the people whereof 
 shall then be in rebellion against the United States, 
 shall be, then, thenceforth and forever, free; and' 
 the executive governrnent of the United States, in- 
 cluding the military and. naval authorities thereof, 
 will recognize and maintain the freedom of such 
 persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such 
 persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may 
 make for their actual freedom. 
 
 That the Executive will, on the first day of Jan- 
 uary aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the 
 State, and parts of States, if any, in which the 
 people therein respectively shall then be in 
 rebellion, against the United States; and the 
 fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall 
 on that day be in good faith* represented in the Con- 
 gress of the United States., by members chosen 
 thereto at elections wherein a majority of the quali- 
 fied voters of such State shall have participated, 
 shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testi- 
 mony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such 
 
Temperance, Emancipation 173 
 
 State and the people thereof, are not then in re- 
 bellion against the United States. 
 
 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of 
 the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested 
 as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the 
 United States, in time of actual armed rebellion 
 against the authority and government of the United 
 States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for 
 suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of 
 January, in the year of our Lord one thousand 
 eight hundred and sixty-three^ and in accordance 
 with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for 
 the full period of one hundred days from the day 
 of the first above mentioned order, designate as 
 the States, wherein the people thereof respectively 
 are this day in rebellion against the United States, 
 the following, to wit : Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, 
 except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, 
 Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascen- 
 sion, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. 
 Mary, St. Martin and Orleans, including the city of 
 New Orleans; Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Geor- 
 gia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia, 
 except the forty-eight counties designated as West 
 Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Ac- 
 comac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Prin- 
 cess Ann and Norfolk, including the cities of 
 Norfolk and Portsmouth, and which excepted parts 
 
174 Miscellany — War, Peace, 
 
 are, for the present, left precisely as if this procla- 
 mation were not issued. 
 
 And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose 
 aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons 
 held as slaves within said designated States^ and 
 parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be, free ; 
 and that the executive government of the United 
 States, including the military and naval authorities 
 thereof, wilLrecognize and maintain the freedom of 
 said persons. 
 
 And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared 
 to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in 
 necessary self-defense, and I recommend to them 
 that in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully 
 for reasonable wages. 
 
 And I further declare and make known that such 
 persons of suitable condition will be received into 
 the armed service of the United States to garrison 
 forts, positions, stations and other places, and to 
 man vessels of all sorts in said service. 
 
 And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of 
 justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon mili- 
 tary necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment 
 of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty 
 God. 
 
 In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand 
 
Teniperaiue, Emancipation 175 
 
 and caused the seal of the United States to be af- 
 fixed. Y 
 
 [L. S.} Done at the City of Washington, this first 
 day of January, in the year of our Lord 
 one thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
 three, and of the independence of the 
 United States of America the eighty- 
 seventh. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 By the President: 
 
 WilHam H. Seward, 
 Secretary of State. 
 
 250 
 
 (December 8. 1863, Annual Message — Complete Works, Vol. II, 
 p. 453.) 
 
 According to our poHtical system, as a matter 
 of civil administration, the general government had 
 no lawful power to effect emancipation in any 
 State, and for a long time it had been hoped that 
 the rebeUion could be suppressed without resorting 
 to it as a military measure. It was all the while 
 deemed possible that the necessity for it might 
 come, and that if it should, the crisis of the contest 
 would then be presented. 
 

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