Life of Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United States: Containing His Early History and Political Career; Together with the Speeches, Messages, Proclamations and Other Official Documents Illustrative of His Eventful Administration

Front Cover
J.E. Potter, 1865 - Presidents - 476 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 191 - I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do 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 207 - Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
Page 191 - My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
Page 103 - In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.
Page 190 - If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.
Page 105 - The prevailing ideas entertained by him, and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature ; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.
Page 105 - Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon, the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.
Page 282 - Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution ? " 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.
Page 192 - That on the first day of January, in 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, thenceforward, and forever free...
Page 122 - Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

Bibliographic information