Herndon's Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life ... The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 2

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Page 365 - Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void : it being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States...
Page 408 - That is the real issue. 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...
Page 408 - 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 all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in...
Page 278 - By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation.
Page 213 - I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell ; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible ; I must die or be better, it appears to me.
Page 319 - Tell me, ye winged winds, That round my pathway roar, Do ye not know some spot Where mortals weep no more ? Some lone and pleasant dell, Some valley in the west, Where, free from toil and pain, The weary soul may rest ? The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low, And sighed for pity as it answered,—
Page 276 - And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed — that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas, or of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown — then I am with him for his justification.
Page 277 - ... that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that charms to destroy...
Page 400 - These complaints, coming apparently from every quarter, Lincoln bore with great patience. To one complainant who followed him into his office he said proudly, " If I had to draw a pen across my record, and erase my whole life from sight, and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world unerased.
Page 400 - Dear Sir — Yours of yesterday, naming places, times, and terms, for joint discussions between us, was received this morning. Although, by the terms, as you propose, you take four openings and closes, to my three., I accede, and thus close the arrangement. I direct this to you at Hillsboro, and shall try to have both your letter and this appear in the Journal and Register of Monday morning.

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