Abraham Lincoln Quotes
I should never have had votes enough to send me here [to the White House], if the people had supposed I should try to use my veto power to upset slavery.
Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States, Remark to Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusettes, 1862
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was Lincoln’s first anti—slavery speech and it was memorable
The Union troops had just been routed at Bull Run. Many in the North thought that the war would be a short one with little disruption of loss of life. Here Norton, like so many others, provided a a more realistic assessment. Also note the reference to “barbarism” in the South, When the Union was formed, the Southern states were not as well developed as the North from an industrial, educational or cultural perspective. There were vestiges of aristocracy, crude law enforcement, and much more poverty (Virginia excepted) than in the North. Most Northerners thought that the South would reform—modernize and become more like the North, but instead the gulf became greater as the North itself developed and changed rapidly while the South was mired in its traditions with their aristocracy gaining more political, economic and cultural control. This attitude of Northern superiority, objectively valid though it may have been, was sorely resented by the South and this resentment has persisted into relatively modern times.
Note that Lincoln did not justify the emancipation proclamation on moral or humanitarian grounds, but on the grounds of military necessity.
This was the last public speech that Lincoln made before he was shot.
The Army and the other power centers of the country did not appreciate this idea. He was assinated in a coup 4 year later.
See {633926} for a quotation from the text that transmitted the resolution.
This is the major factor in many nations trying to shift to a democracy from a totalitarian form of government. The winners assume that they can now do anything without regard for the minority rights of opinions.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
