
1860s, Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)
Diary entry (1820), as quoted in The Diary of John Quincy Adams (1951), by John Quincy Adams, Scribner's Sons, New York, p. 228-229 http://web.archive.org/web/20130703084250/http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps6.htm
1860s, Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)
Source: 2010s, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), p. xviii
To Otto von Bismarck in June 1878, as quoted in Around the World with General Grant http://www.granthomepage.com/grantslavery.htm (1879), by John Russell Young, The American News Company, New York, vol. 7, p. 416.
1870s, Around the World with General Grant (1879)
1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)
Context: My argument against the dissolution of the American Union is this. It would place the slave system more exclusively under the control of the slave-holding states, and withdraw it from the power in the northern states which is opposed to slavery. Slavery is essentially barbarous in its character. It, above all things else, dreads the presence of an advanced civilization. It flourishes best where it meets no reproving frowns, and hears no condemning voices. While in the Union it will meet with both. Its hope of life, in the last resort, is to get out of the Union. I am, therefore, for drawing the bond of the Union more completely under the power of the free states. What they most dread, that I most desire. I have much confidence in the instincts of the slaveholders. They see that the Constitution will afford slavery no protection when it shall cease to be administered by slaveholders. They see, moreover, that if there is once a will in the people of America to abolish slavery, this is no word, no syllable in the Constitution to forbid that result. They see that the Constitution has not saved slavery in Rhode Island, in Connecticut, in New York, or Pennsylvania; that the Free States have only added three to their original number. There were twelve Slave States at the beginning of the Government: there are fifteen now.
Comments on the North American Events (1862)
Context: Lincoln’s proclamation is even more important than the. Lincoln is a sui generis figure in the annals of history. He has no initiative, no idealistic impetus, cothurnus, no historical trappings. He gives his most important actions always the most commonplace form. Other people claim to be “fighting for an idea”, when it is for them a matter of square feet of land. Lincoln, even when he is motivated by, an idea, talks about “square feet”. He sings the bravura aria of his part hesitatively, reluctantly and unwillingly, as though apologising for being compelled by circumstances “to act the lion”. The most redoubtable decrees — which will always remain remarkable historical documents-flung by him at the enemy all look like, and are intended to look like, routine summonses sent by a lawyer to the lawyer of the opposing party, legal chicaneries, involved, hidebound actiones juris. His latest proclamation, which is drafted in the same style, the manifesto abolishing slavery, is the most important document in American history since the establishment of the Union, tantamount to the tearing up of the old American Constitution.
“The Confederacy stands for slavery and the Union for freedom.”
Private conversation https://books.google.com/books?id=cpLsLWYhMLoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22not+a+man+shall+be+a+slave%22+%22Mcpherson%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAzgKahUKEwjiwOnYqoLIAhUIez4KHaTnDok#v=onepage&q=slavery&f=false (January 1862)
1860s