Quotes About Lincoln

The man [Grant] who more than any other, save Lincoln, had changed us into a nation whose citizens were all freemen, realized entirely that these freemen would remain free only while they kept mastery over their own evil passions.

No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer.

I seem to have no problem revealing my crush on the man who murdered Lincoln.

When Arthur Schlesinger Sr. pioneered the 'presidential greatness poll' in 1948, the top five were Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jefferson. Only Wilson appears to be seriously fading, probably because his support for the World War I-era Sedition Act now seems outrageous; in this analogy, Woodrow is like the Doors and the Sedition Act is Oliver Stone.

Lincoln replied:There is a difference between secession against the Constitution and in favor of the Constitution.

The fathers of America had designed their capital city to form a crucifix. The Washington Monument marked the center, with the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial forming the longer center line while the Jefferson Memorial and the White House formed the shorter horizontal

The fathers of America had designed their capital city to form a crucifix. The Washington Monument marked the center, with the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial forming the longer center line while the Jefferson Memorial and the White House formed the shorter horizontal line.

The best illustrated histories of the assassination are Twenty Days by Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., and Lincoln's Assassins: Their Trial and Execution by James L. Swanson and Daniel R. Weinberg. Twenty Days contains more than three hundred black-and-white photos of the people and places connected to the assassination and Lincoln's funeral.

The embalmer opened the coffin to check on the body. Lincoln's face was turning darker by the day, which the embalmers tried to conceal by coating the skin with chalk-white potions.

The embalmer and undertaker opened Lincoln's coffin. He had been dead for eighteen days. Only chemicals and makeup had kept him presentable during the journey. At the beginning, at the White House funeral, Lincoln's face had looked almost natural. He had changed along the way. The face continued to darken, and more and more white face powder had to be applied. Lincoln no longer resembled a sleeping man. Now he looked like a ghastly, pale, waxlike statue.

On April 17 Jefferson Davis was still on his way to Charlotte. Seventy-two hours after Lincoln's assassination, he still had no idea that Lincoln had been murdered.

In Connecticut we had freedom of religion so you could belong to any church you wanted, unless you were a Papist.

THE TIMING OF Lincoln's public letters turned out to be fortuitous

What Lincoln probably did not know was that Halleck suffered severely from hemorrhoids, which grew even more painful under stress, and that he was taking opium to ease the pain.

The principal form of property in the South was, of course, slave property. Southern states had seceded because they feared that the Lincoln administration would interfere with the institution—despite the president's repeated assertions, well into the war, that he had neither the intention nor the power to do so.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party.

Keeping the Union together, freeing slaves and being assassinated all added up to creating 'Lincoln the myth.' He overcame a lot of his own prejudices and became what many would consider the first black man's president.

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

George Saunders's 'Lincoln in the Bardo' is a hands-down masterpiece - the subject of Abraham Lincoln and the genius of this author is a perfect union.

What Republicans need to do is to go back to their roots - starting with Lincoln - and remind the nation that they are the party of national growth, racial equality and unity of purpose. These Lincolnian themes will serve Republicans - and the nation - much better than becoming the party on the lookout for the supposed rat head of higher taxes.

If Lincoln is among history's truly great men, he didn't achieve that stature until his final three years. This was when his long-held antipathy to slavery cohered into a dedicated hostility that gave larger purpose to the Civil War and also confirmed the logic of Lincoln's destiny.

But having said all of that, that still doesn't account for a lot of the increase in popularity which stems, I think, from Lincoln's personal characteristics.

The farmers who were hiring Lincoln complained that he was lazy, "awful lazy." He admitted it. "My father taught me to work," he said, "but he never taught me to love it.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion," Lincoln lectured Herndon, "and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.