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.

We must have though a man who recognizes the slavery issue as being the living issue of the day; who does not hesitate to declare slavery a wrong, nor to deal with it as such; who believes in the power and duty of Congress to prevent the spread of it.

I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong.

The Emancipation Proclamation shattered in one blow the slave system, undermining the foundations of the economy of the rebellious South; and guaranteed that no slave-holding class, if permitted to exist in defeat, could prepare a new and deadlier war after resuscitation.

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

I am sorry any republican inclines to dally with Pop. Sov. [popular sovereignty] of any sort. It acknowledges that slavery has equal rights with liberty, and surrenders all we have contended for.