Abraham Lincoln: Master of Words

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D. Appleton, 1924 - 178 pages

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Page 169 - If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would 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. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union : and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
Page 66 - 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 makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Page 124 - A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. " One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever.
Page 119 - And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy — a government of the people by the same people — can or can not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.
Page 165 - I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Page 75 - But you say you are conservative — eminently conservative — 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?
Page 31 - Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat; and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation.
Page 56 - Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work — who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle...
Page 88 - 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 government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread on the sweat of other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven!
Page 113 - I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

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