Abraham Lincoln Quotes

Emancipation was a proclamation, but not a fact.

I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see the policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery.

If the states had to vote on slavery, we would have lost the vote.

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man's president.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women's rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

Lincoln emancipated nobody. The man freed not a single slave.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

But it required a disastrous, internecine war to bring this question of human freedom to a crisis, and the process of striking the shackles from the slave was accomplished in a single hour.

The Emancipation Proclamation was really a tool of war.

One thing that is not commonly taught in history classes is that the United States passed the first law of any nation outlawing slavery. That showed the world that it could be done. The state of Pennsylvania passed that law even before there were anti-slavery societies. If a slave owner from another state brought a slave to Pennsylvania and stayed for more than six months, the slave was free.

Proclaiming slaves free does not make them free.

This evening (January 11th) our whole mess remained in the dining room after tea, and conversed upon the subject of Mr. Lincoln’s bill to abolish slavery. It was approved by all; I believe it as good bill as we could get at this time, and am willing to pay for slaves to save them from the southern market, as I suppose every man in the District would sell his slaves if he saw that slavery was to be abolished.

No Sheriff, Deputy Sheriff, Coroner, Constable, Jailor, or other officer of this Commonwealth, shall hereafter arrest or detain, or aid in the arrest and detention or imprisonment, in any jail or any other building belonging to this Commonwealth, or to any county, city, or town thereof, of any person for the reason that he is claimed as a fugitive slave

Another clause in the Constitution is a contract on the part of the non-slaveholding States to seize and restore runaway slaves--but why restore when you have taught the slave that he has a right to freedom?

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued 90 years ago. I believe in gradualism. But 90 years is gradual enough.

I would be exceedingly glad to see that there never be another slave state admitted to the Union…. I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia.

We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their pristine liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands ... who have been made subject to slavery (servituti subicere). These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money

It [the 13th Amendment] is not confined to African slavery alone. It is general and universal in its application. Slavery of white men as well as of black men is prohibited, and not merely slavery in the strict sense of the term, but involuntary servitude in every form

My grandfather was born in 1920. His grandfather was born in 1860, at the beginning of the Civil War, into an America where slavery had yet to be abolished. And so, as I have sometimes thought about it, I dodged slavery by just five generations.

The U.S. Constitution has absorbed the end of slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and Watergate.

The question of what actually caused the Civil War is secondary to the result of the Civil War, which is that after the war was over, slavery was ended, and the North and the South reconciled. And I think we need to respect that.

I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes it! I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.

The Convention thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.