Quotes & Sayings About Slavery From Abraham Lincoln

We shall need all the anti-slavery feeling in the country, and more; you can go home and try to bring the people to your views, and you may say anything you like about me, if that will help ... When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life. — Abraham Lincoln

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay. — Abraham Lincoln

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union. — Abraham Lincoln

I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction. — Abraham Lincoln

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. — Abraham Lincoln

DARWIN'S "SACRED CAUSE"?
Much ink has been dedicated to determining Charles Darwin's role in "scientific racism." The only way to empirically and scientifically determine his role is to organize the events as a timeline, and thus placing them into context of historical events. Political analysis without historical context is all sail and no rudder. In America we are constantly made aware that both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, in the same year, February 12, 1809. Adrian Desmond and James Moore famous 2009 book, "Darwin's Sacred Cause," leverages this factoid in an effort to place Charles Darwin at par with Abraham Lincoln in the abolition of slavery. This fraudulently steals away credit from Abraham Lincoln, who took a bullet to the head for the cause, and transfers it by inference to an aristocrat whom remained in his plush abode throughout the conflict and never lifted a finger for the cause. — A.E. Samaan

Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue. — Abraham Lincoln

Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil ... — Abraham Lincoln

In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction ... All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon. — Abraham Lincoln

I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican. — Marion Barry

We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong. — Abraham Lincoln

I can not but hate the prospect of slavery's expansion. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity. — Abraham Lincoln

Repeal the Missouri Compromise - repeal all compromises - repeal the Declaration of Independence - repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak. — Abraham Lincoln

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. — Abraham Lincoln

We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom. — Abraham Lincoln

I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death
to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old. — Abraham Lincoln

I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia. — Abraham Lincoln

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. — Abraham Lincoln

If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means, succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery; and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost father-land, with bright prospects for the future; and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation. — Abraham Lincoln

Being used now, in order to force slavery on to Kansas; for it cannot be done in any other way. [Sensation.] The — Abraham Lincoln

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world. — Abraham Lincoln

I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring. — Abraham Lincoln

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. — Abraham Lincoln

it was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, not John Brown. In 1859, John Brown was hanged, with federal complicity, for attempting to do by small-scale violence what Lincoln would do by large-scale violence several years later - end slavery. — Howard Zinn

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others, who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live" were of the same opinion - thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. — Abraham Lincoln

What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism. — Abraham Lincoln

We think slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the territories, where our votes will reach it. — Abraham Lincoln

I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war. — Abraham Lincoln

In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. — Abraham Lincoln

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both *may* be, and one *must* be, wrong. God cannot be *for* and *against* the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party - and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaption to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true - that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere great power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either *saved* or *destroyed* the Union without human contest. Yet the contest began, And, having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds. — Abraham Lincoln

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. — Abraham Lincoln

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. — Abraham Lincoln

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us. — Abraham Lincoln

I found out that many subjects were taboo from the white man's point of view. Among the topics they did not like to discuss with Negros were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the Part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. — Richard Wright

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel. — Abraham Lincoln

If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will impose slavery upon any other creature. — Abraham Lincoln

Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced any emancipation edict. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued. — Abraham Lincoln

Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. — Abraham Lincoln

I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question (slavery). They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary-so evanescent. — Abraham Lincoln

The Republican Party, which John McCain led as our nominee in 2008, is going to become irrelevant if we become the party of intolerance and hate. The party founded by Abraham Lincoln was a party that fought slavery and intolerance at every level. — Ed Rollins

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. — Abraham Lincoln

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man's right of property...
This is a world of compensations; and he would -be- no slave must consent to -have- no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression. Your obedient Servant,
[Abraham Lincoln]
April 6, 1859, in a letter to MA State Rep Henry L. Pierce
Springfield, Ill. — Abraham Lincoln

Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. — Abraham Lincoln

I believe that the flag of the Confederate States of America is a painful symbol and reminder of racial injustice and slavery which (Abraham) Lincoln denounced from here over 150 years ago — Howard Dean

I have said a hundred times, and I have no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and to interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always. — Abraham Lincoln

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. — Abraham Lincoln

All the heroes of black emancipation - from the black abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, to the woman who organized the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, to the leader whose actions finally destroyed American slavery, Abraham Lincoln - were Republicans. It is of the utmost importance to progressive propagandists to conceal or at least ignore this essential historical truth. — Dinesh D'Souza