We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.
To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards of men.
You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it.
I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.
Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil...
When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.
This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.
Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.
An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not “distinctly and expressly affirmed” in it.
We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe – nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.
Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.
You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.
I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question – that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, – I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation.
One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.
Military glory-that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood-that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy...
Do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of Independence.
We must ask where we are and whither we are tending.
During the Civil War, on hearing complaints that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant drank alcohol to excess Find out what Grant drinks and send a barrel of it to each of my other generals!