"I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal'. We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes'. When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics'. When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty. To Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Abraham Lincoln, letter to Joshua F. Speed (24 August 1855)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/United_States
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
United States
802 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by United States →
Related Quotes
"Sixty years ago, at dawn on June 25, the Korean War broke out when Communist North Korea invaded the Republic of Kore…"
"It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It is also a beautiful thing to watch. Visitors from o…"
"Protect every citizen, including the millions of people of foreign birth who will flock to our shores to become citiz…"
"U.S. President Barack Obama has nominated Korean-American Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College, as the ne…"
"That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from al…"
"The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any…"
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and d…"
"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted."
"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of…"
"I believe in specific ideas and I believe that those ideas have consequences. I believe in the individual, in less go…"