Abraham Lincoln War Quotations

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,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.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise to the occasion. We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honour or dishonour, to the last generation. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, our last best hope of Earth.

I can make more generals, but horses cost money.

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 all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save 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.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

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. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.

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.

I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free.

Let us strive on to finish the work we are in.

I have stepped out upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement I have the best of the bargain.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.

It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives.

I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country.

I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has.

My God! My God! What will the country say?

There is really no crisis except an artificial one...If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the trouble will come to an end.

War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.

Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

[Uniting workers should not] lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property.

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

In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.

We must believe that He permits it [this war] for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with ourlimited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that he who made the world still governs it.

God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time.

I certainly know that if the war fails, the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed, if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.

If I had my way, this war would never have been commenced. If I had been allowed my way this war would have been ended before this.

We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

Force is all conquering, but it's victories are short lived.

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.

You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.

Military glory-that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood-that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy...

During the Civil War, on hearing complaints that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant drank alcohol to excess Find out what Grant drinks and send a barrel of it to each of my other generals!

I have just read your dispatch about sore-tongued and fatigued horses, Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the Battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the constitution that no man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

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.

I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down but I bite my lip and keep quiet.

If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.

I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.

The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be 'the Union as it was'.

I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

I would like to speak in terms of praise due to the many brave officers and soldiers who have fought in the cause of the war.

I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people, according to the bond of service - the United States Constitution; and that, as such, I am responsible to them.

You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and, perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional - I think differently.

But the proclamation, as law, either is valid, or is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life.

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time.

You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but, no matter. Fight you, then exclusively to save the Union.

And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonnet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation...

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed.

We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed.

We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein.

Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

The Lord spared the fitten and the rest he seen fitten to die.

He has got the slows, Mr. Blair.

I can't spare this man, he fights!

Lamon, that speech won't scour. It is a flat failure and the people are disappointed.

I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.

I can make brigadier generals, but i can't make horses.

My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not to either save or destroy Slavery.

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred ans sixty-three, 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, thence forward, and forever free...

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here so nobly advanced.

You are green, it is true; but they are green also. You are all green alike.

The trouble with Hooker is that he's got his headquarters where his hindquarters aught to be.

Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard, not half of them get there.

confused and Stunned, like a duck hit on the head.

It's bad. It's damned bad.

I failed, I failed, and that is about all that can be said about it.

I know the hole he went in at, but I can't tell you what hole he will come out of.

With this honor devolves upon you also a corresponding responsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so under God it will sustain you.

The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.

It is a good face. I am glad this war is over at last.

My Dear McClellan, if you don't want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while. Yours respectfully.

If I gave McClellan all the men he asked for, they could not find room to lie down; they'd have to sleep standing up.

His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by oiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.

As a nation we began by declaring that all me are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal except Negroes.

If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.

No State, upon it own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally nothing. I therefore consider that the Union is unbroken. There needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless forced upon the national authority.

I don't s'pose anybody on earth likes gingerbread better'n I do-and gets less'n I do.

Let the people know the truth and the country is safe.

I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.

I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races: that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.

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 do that. I have here stated my purpose according to my official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office.