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In reference to you, colored people, let me say God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called masters, you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and bayonet and teach them that you are; for God created all men free, giving to each the same rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

— Abraham Lincoln Tour of Richmond (1865)

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More quotes by Abraham Lincoln

Without the military help of the black freedman, the war against the South could not have been won.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature — opposition to it, in his love of justice.

Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)

Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.

All Abraham Lincoln quotes →

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The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

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Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.

John Adams Letter to Robert J. Evans (1819)

Partial freedom seems to me the most invidious form of slavery.

Edmund Burke Is the Party Over? (2017)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Abraham Lincoln (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.