“Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.”
Letter to Major General http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/lett-4.htm Joseph Hooker (26 January 1863) <br class="br">1860s
“Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.”
Letter to Major General http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/lett-4.htm Joseph Hooker (26 January 1863) <br class="br">1860s
“The Confederacy stands for slavery and the Union for freedom.”
Private conversation https://books.google.com/books?id=cpLsLWYhMLoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22not+a+man+shall+be+a+slave%22+%22Mcpherson%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAzgKahUKEwjiwOnYqoLIAhUIez4KHaTnDok#v=onepage&q=slavery&f=false (January 1862) <br class="br">1860s
1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Kontext: To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.
1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
1850s, Letter to Joshua F. Speed (1855)
Speech in Springfield, Illinois (17 July 1858), referring to Stephen Douglas. Quoted in Charles Sumner (1861), The Promises of the Declaration of Independence
1850s
1850s, Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society (1859)
1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)
“So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”
Comment on meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, according to Charles Edward Stowe, Lyman Beecher Stowe, "How Mrs. Stowe wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'", McClure's magazine 36:621 http://books.google.com/books?id=biAAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA621&dq=%22little+woman+who+wrote+the+book+that+made+this+great+war%22 (April 1911), with a footnote stating: "Mr. Charles Edward Stowe, one of the authors of this article, accompanied his mother on this visit to Lincoln, and remembers the occasion distinctly." <br class="br">Annie Fields, "Days with Mrs. Stowe", Atlantic Monthly 7:148 http://books.google.com/books?id=8F0CAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA148&dq=%22Is+this+the+little+woman+who+made+the+great+war%22 (August 1896) <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Varianta: Her daughter was told that when the President heard her name he seized her hand, saying, "Is this the little woman who made the great war?" <br class="br">Varianta: So you are the little woman who caused this great war!
1860s, Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio (1861), Commercial version
1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
At the end of the Civil War, asking that a military band play "Dixie" (10 April 1865) as quoted in Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy (1962) by Hans Nathan. Variant account: "I have always thought "Dixie" one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it... I now request the band to favor me with its performance".
1860s
1860s, Speeches to Ohio Regiments (1864), Speech to One Hundred Forty-eighth Ohio Regiment (1864)
Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a small evil, and much of its danger consists in the proneness of our minds to regard its direct as its only consequences.
1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)
“Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.”
1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)