Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was the sixteenth President of the United States, born near Hodgensville, Kentucky. He spent his boyhood there and in the Indiana forests, and picked up some education in the backwoods schools. He passed some years in rough work. He was clerk in a store at New Salem, Illinois. He became village postmaster and deputy county surveyor, and began to study law.

From 1834 to 1842 he led the Whigs in the State legislature, and in 1846 entered Congress. He prospered as a lawyer, and almost left politics, but the opening of the slavery question in 1854 recalled him, and in a series of public debates with Stephen Douglas established his reputation as debater and abolitionist. Unsuccessful in his candidature for the Senate, he was nominated by the Republicans for the Presidency, and elected in 1860. His election was the signal for the secession of the Southern States.

Lincoln refused to recognise the secession, accepted the war, and prosecuted it with energy. On New Year's day, 1863, he proclaimed the emancipation of the negroes, and was re-elected President in 1864, but shortly after his second inauguration was assassinated. He was a man of high character, straightforward, steadfast, and sympathetic.

Wisdom & Quotes

• The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

- Speech, May 19, 1856

• I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

- letter to A G Hodges, April 4, 1864

• Common-looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

- quoted by John Hay, Letters of John Hay and Extracts from His diary, C L Hay, ed

• What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

- Speech, February 27, 1860

• This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

- First Inaugural Address, 1861

• You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.

- attributed but possibly apocryphal

• Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

- letter to H L Pierce et al, April 6, 1859

• Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

- speech, January 27, 1838

• Fourscore 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.

- address at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863

• A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

- speech, June 16, 1858

• (I feel) somewhat like the boy in Kentucky who stubbed his toe while running to see his sweetheart. The boy said he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.

- reply when asked how he felt about the Democrats winning the N Y State elections, quoted in Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, November 22, 1862

• All I ask for the Negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

- speech, July 17, 1858

• Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

- First Inaugural Address, 1861

• With malice toward 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.

- Second Inaugural Address, 1865

Alfred Tennyson

Nearby pages
Abraham Rees, Abraham Sharp, Abraham Shlonski, Abraham Sutzkever, Abraham Tucker, Abraham van Diepenbeeck