Quotations of Lincoln and Others

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. –Abraham Lincoln

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. –Frederick Douglass

Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be. –Charles Sumner

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. –Abraham Lincoln

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged…. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." –Abraham Lincoln

My soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it,--ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it. –Harriet Beecher Stowe from Uncle Tom’s Cabin

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy. –Abraham Lincoln

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. –Abraham Lincoln, The Emancipation Proclamation