12 quotes
I know how subtle, elusive, apparently ineradicable, is the spirit of caste.
The Good Fight (1865)
There is no gentleman in America, but he who feels that every man is his equal in natural right, and who does not know that he is cheated if every man does not have fair play.
The Good Fight (1865)
While we read history we make history ... Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.
The Democratic Party then, as now, was in open alliance with slavery, in a conspiracy against the Constitution and the peace of the country.
It is a wise old saw that warns us not to whistle until we are out of the woods.
The Good Fight (1865)
I am no more a child, but a man; no longer a confederacy, but a nation. I am no more Virginia, New York, Carolina, or Massachusetts, but the United States of America.
The Good Fight (1865)
I walked beside the evening sea
And dreamed a dream that could not be;
The waves that plunged along the shore
Said only: "Dreamer, dream no more!"
[A]ll men have original equal rights which government did not give and cannot justly take away.
Government is, unquestionably, a science of compromises, but only of policies and interests, not of essential rights; and if of them, then the sacrifice must fall equally on all.
The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
The country was divided between the Whig and Democratic organizations. The Democratic Party then, as now, was in open alliance with slavery, in a conspiracy against the Constitution and the peace of the country.
The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
The debate forced upon the mind of the country this question. Does the Constitution, made at the time we know, by the men we know, holding the views we know, for the distinct intention it declares, stultify itself by securing the destruction of its expressed purposes?
The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)
Never fear, true hearts! A people which has shown the quality of its genius as this nation has in the last four years will finish its work. It will go forward and not backward. For our America shall be the Sinai of the nations, and from the terrible thunders and lightnings of its great struggle shall proceed the divine law of liberty that shall subdue and harmonize the world.
The Good Fight (1865)