When I was preparing for
my solo piano CD on the music of the Civil War,
I collected these quotes and found them very useful. I hope you do too. - Bill
Carrothers
Abraham Lincoln-Selected Quotes
January 27, 1838
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we
fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean
and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with
all the treasure of the earth in their military chests; with a Buonaparte for a commander,
could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in the
trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it
ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be
our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must
live through all time, or die by suicide.
August 24, 1855
Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we
began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically
read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." Soon it will read
"all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and
catholics." When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country
where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism
can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.
June 16, 1858
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do
expect that it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing, or all the other.
August 1, 1858
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 not
democracy.
March 4, 1861
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
yourselves being 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.
I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 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.
December 3, 1861
The struggle of today, is not altogether for today--it is for a vast future
also.
Date unknown
Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard. Not
half of them get there.
August 22, 1862
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 save
it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty;
and I intend no modification of my oft expressed personal wish that all men
everywhere could be free.
Date unknown
Cameron is so corrupt, the only thing he wouldn't steal is a red-hot stove.
September 30, 1862
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in
accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for
and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible
that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the
human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to affect His
purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest,
and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now
contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest.
Yet the contest began. And, having begun, He could give the final victory to either side
any day. Yet the contest proceeds.
December, 1862
If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.
December 1, 1862
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 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. Other means
may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way which,
if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
January 26, 1863
Major-General Hooker,
I have placed you at the head of the Army of
the Potomac. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that
both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in
spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes,
can set up as dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the
dictatorship.
And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy, and
sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories.
- A. Lincoln -
January, 1863
The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation because she never cackles
until after the egg has been laid.
November 11, 1863
Secretary Stanton,
I personally wish Jacob R. Freese, of New Jersey, to be appointed a Colonel for a colored regiment-- and this regardless of whether he can tell the exact shade of Julius Ceasar's hair.
November 19, 1863
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 battlefield
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 this nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot
hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated
it, far beyond our meager 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 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, and for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.
November 10, 1864
It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for
the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence in great
emergencies.
On this point the present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test;
and a presidential election occurring in regular course during the rebellion added not a
little to the strain. If the loyal people, united, were put to the utmost of their
strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided, and partially paralyzed, by a
political war among themselves?
But the election was a necessity.
We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could
force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already
conquered and ruined us.
November 21, 1864
Mrs. Bixby-
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War
Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother
of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt
to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died
to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement,
and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that
must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
- A. Lincoln -
March 4, 1865
At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there
is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement,
somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the
expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called
forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and
engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought to avert it.
Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already
attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even
before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result
less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and
each invokes His aid against the other. 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. The prayers of both could not be answered;
that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. 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 up 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 repaid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three-thousand years
ago, so still it must be said "the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous
altogether."
With malice towards 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.