Abraham Lincoln Slavery Quotations

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature - opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

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

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

I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question - that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, - I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation.

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.

We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe - nay, we know, that that is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself.

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.

Now what is Judge Douglas Popular Sovereignty? It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.

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

When Judge Douglas says that whoever, or whatever community, wants slaves, they have a right to have them, he is perfectly logical if there is nothing wrong in the institution; but if you admit that it is wrong, he cannot logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.

The slave-breeders and slave-traders, are a small, odious and detested class, among you; and yet in politics, they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters, as you are the master of your own negroes.

You know I dislike slavery; and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it.

Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.

But, slavery is good for some people! ! ! As a good thing, slavery is strikingly peculiar, in this, that it is the only good thing which no man ever seeks the good of, for himself.

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

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.

I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing, that no man desires for himself.

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

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.

What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of Slavery?

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.

I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I think slavery is wrong, morally, 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.

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.

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.

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.

In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

When the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I will be willing to do my duty though it cost my life.

We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.

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

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself