Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” — Second Inaugural Address, 1865.

Selected Writings

Douglas Debate
October 7, 1858

If you will take Judge Douglas’s speeches and select the short and pointed sentences expressed by him — as his declaration that he “don’t care whether slavery is voted up or down” — you will see at once that this is perfectly logical if you do not admit that slavery is wrong.
If you do admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say he doesn’t care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down. Nobody has a right to do wrong.

To the Republicans of Boston, Massachusetts
April 6, 1859

This is a world of compensations; and he who 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, cannot long retain it.

Cooper Institute Address, New York
February 27, 1860

I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current experience—to reject all progress, all improvement.
What I do say is that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive and argument so clear that even their great authority cannot stand against it.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has arisen again upon this same subject, is that warning [of Washington’s Farewell Address] a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you?

Letter to Horace Greeley
August 22, 1862

My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.
What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
September 22, 1862

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter … all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

Annual Message to Congress
December 1, 1862

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this Administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves.
The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.
We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

Final Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within the rebellious States are, and henceforward shall be, free.

Second Inaugural Address
March 4, 1865

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; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.