Abraham Lincoln Quotes


It is also unsatisfactory to some, that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.


Context

This was the last public speech that Lincoln made before he was shot.


Citations

Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (Republican, IL), Speech, April 11, 1865

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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Miller was the first Black American admitted to a Graduate Program—Johns Hopkins—in Mathematics. Women were not then universally allowed to vote and suffrage was a major issue. Miller, like many Black males, was opposed to female suffrage. The prospect of many women holding public office was to him so absurd that the potential prospect was sufficient to oppose women voting.


Lieber was assigned by President Lincoln to study the then international laws of war and prepare a manual for the guidance of union troops in the Civil War. Lincoln then issued the document as a general order. This statement was critical in inhibiting the South from making good on their threat to enslave any Black Union Soldier Captured and to execute any Union Black soldier who was a runaway slave from the South. Lincoln threatened to retaliate and also to hold senior Confederate officers accountable for following these rules. General Sherman and other Union Senior Officers executed a few Confederate soldiers who violated rules of the order and the “illegal” practices stopped, and with few exceptions the senior officers of both sides followed Lieber’s rules. These rules, with few modifications, governed U. S. military policies and rules through the Second World War.


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The Quakers were in the forefront of not only the abolition of slavery but of the integration of the races.


Eight years and a Civil War later, he had changed his mind and was the sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1866—the first Federal civil rights law in America. See {587711}.


Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
  • Born: February 12, 1809
  • Died: April 15, 1865
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: President

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.