Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
… With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural speech 4th Mary 1865
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (Bancroft copy)
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. Abraham Lincoln, House Divided speech 1858
In your hands, my dissatisfied 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. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Abraham Lincoln, Inaugural address 1861
I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. Abraham Lincoln, 1858 debate
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it. Abraham Lincoln, letter to Horace Greeley August 1862
On 1st day of January in the year of our Lord 1863 all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of the state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, henceforth and forever free. Abraham Lincoln, The Emancipation Proclamation
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Abraham Lincoln, speech Edwardsville 11th September 1858
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise – with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We – even we here – hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Abraham Lincoln, message to Congress December 1862
The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers.
The privilege of creating and issuing money is not only the supreme prerogative of government, but it is the government’s greatest creative opportunity.
By the adoption of these principles, the long-felt want for a uniform medium will be satisfied. The taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest, discounts and exchanges.
The financing of all public enterprises, the maintenance of stable government and ordered progress, and the conduct of the Treasury will become matter of practical administrators.
The people can and will be furnished with a currency as safe as their own government. Money will cease to be the master and become the servant of humanity.
Democracy will rise, superior to the money power. Abraham Lincoln, cited Permanent Distribution of National Production p89
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. Abraham Lincoln, first Inaugural address
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. Abraham Lincoln
... The spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world – enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites – causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty – criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest. Abraham Lincoln, speech Illinois October 1854
When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism. If the Negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another. Abraham Lincoln, cited The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American republicanism ... Now the relation of master and slave is pro tanto a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government. ibid.
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks, and throes, and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man’s heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak. ibid.
Little by little, but steadily as man’s march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a ‘sacred right of self-government’. These principles can not stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other. ibid.
Without slavery the rebellion would never have existed; without slavery it could not continue. Abraham Lincoln, second annual message 1st December 1862
At least 600,000 men died in the Civil War. Major battles numbered the dead in the thousands; even minor skirmishes killed hundreds ... Then why study the death of thirteen men? ... Mass death numbs the mind and heart as it numbers its vast toll. Relief from the horror is less possible when we watch old Joe Woods and thirteen-year-old David Shelton plead for life – and then die. Phillip Shaw Pauadan, Victims: A True Story of The Civil War
It is something great and greatening to cherish an ideal; to act in the light of truth that is far-away and far above; to set aside the near advantage, the momentary pleasure; the snatching of seeming good to self; and to act for remoter ends, for higher good, and for interests other than our own. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
But out of that silence rose new sounds more appalling still, the strange ventriloquism of which you could not locate the source. A smothered moan as if a thousand discords were flowing together into one key note. Weird. Unearthly. Terrible to hear and bear. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
The causes of the war were wide apart, but the manhood was the same. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
As I sit tonight writing this epistle the dead are all around me. The knife of the surgeon is busy at work. Amputated legs and arms lay scattered in every direction. I hope my eyes will never again look upon such sights. Ned Spencer, Cincinnati Times
For me the picture of the Civil War ... a discussion about something higher. About humanity. About human dignity. About human freedom. Barbara Fields, historian
If there was a single event that caused the War, it was the establishment of the United States in independence from Great Britain with slavery still a part of its heritage. Barbara Fields
A Proclamation By The President: Seventy-Five Thousand Volunteers Called For. The Government to be Sustained. Its Property Protected, and the Laws Enforced. Newspaper article