There are men who doubt this. There are men who believe that democracy, as a form of Government and a frame of life, is limited or measured by a kind of mystical and artificial fate - that, for some unexplained reason, tyranny and slavery have become the surging wave of the future - and that freedom is an ebbing tide. But we Americans know that this is not true.

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

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think ... to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery.

I have always hated slavery, I think as much as any Abolitionist.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union ... If I could save the Union without freeing any slave... if I could save it by freeing all the slaves... I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.