10000+ Motivational and Inspiring Quotes About Life, Love & Success

Why was the amendment,

expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery,

voted down?

Plainly enough now,

the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche

for the Dred Scott decision.

Being elected to Congress,

though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it,

has not pleased me as much as I expected.

If the great American people will only keep their temper,

on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end,

and the question which now distracts the country

will be settled just as surely as all other difficulties of

like character which have originated in this government

have been adjusted.

I have always hated slavery, I think,

as much as any abolitionist.

I have been an Old Line Whig.

I have always hated it,

but I have always been quiet about it until

this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent

upon the face of the globe in fertility of soil

and in the proportionable amount of the same

which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.

You may think it was a very little thing,

and in these days it seems to me like a trifle,

but it was a most important incident in my life.

I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy,

had earned a dollar in less than a day;

that by honest work, I had earned a dollar.

I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to

make anything out of my early life.

In so far as the government lands can be disposed of,

I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels so

that every poor man may have a home.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to

keep a young man down; and they will succeed,

too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from

its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

It is rather for us 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.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it

and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief

that it is in course of ultimate extinction,

or its advocates will push it forward,

till it shall become alike lawful in all the States old as well as new

North as well as South.

I can express all my views on the slavery question

by quotations from Henry Clay.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance

with the will of God.

Both may be, and one must be wrong.

To give victory to the right,

not bloody bullets,

but peaceful ballots only,

are necessary.

That our government should have been maintained in its original

form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at.

It had many props to support it through that period,

which now are decayed and crumbled away.

Through that period,

it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now,

it is understood to be a successful one.

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska,

or other new territories,

is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there.

The whole nation is interested that the best

use shall be made of these territories.

We want them for the homes of free white people.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated.

It is the lawyer's avenue to the public.

However able and faithful he may be in other respects,

people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech.

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by

all and thought to include all; but now,

to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal,

it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till,

if its framers could rise from their graves,

they could not at all recognize it.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently,

half slave and half free.

We can succeed only by concert.

It is not,

'Can any of us imagine better,' but,

'Can we all do better?'