Lawyers From The United States

"It required no effort on his part to admit another man's superiority, and his admission that General Grant was right and he was wrong about operations in Vicksburg was not intended for effect as some suppose, but was perfectly in character."

"The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party, while it attracts to itself by its creed, the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government; anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose."

"Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure."

"Lincoln's appeal to "the better angels of our nature" failed to avert a fratricidal war. But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's first and second inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable."

"Lincoln was fascinated and disturbed by the writings of proslavery ideologues like George Fitzhugh. The southern critique of wage slavery catalyzed in Lincoln a defense of free society. Most northerners, he insisted, were "neither hirers nor hired," but worked "for themselves, on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand, nor hirelings or slaves on the other." Wage earners were generally young "beginners," hired "by their own consent"; contrary to southern charges, they were not "fatally fixed in that condition for life." Yet even Lincoln's eloquent exposition could not escape free labor's inherent ambiguities. Was wage labor a normal, acceptable part of the northern social order or a temporary status, associated with the lack of genuine freedom?"

"But Lincoln also understood that after such a decision, a democracy should seek peace through a new unity. For a democracy can keep alive only if the settlement of old difficulties clears the ground and transfers energies to face new responsibilities. Never can it have as much ability and purpose as it needs in that striving; the end of battle does not end the infinity of those needs. That is why Lincoln — commander of a people as well as of an army — asked that his battle end "with malice toward none, with charity for all.""

"Lincoln asked the nation to confront unblinkingly the legacy of slavery. What were the requirements of justice in the face of this reality? What would be necessary to enable former slaves and their descendants to enjoy fully the pursuit of happiness? Lincoln did not live to provide an answer. A century and a half later, we have yet to do so."

"The hallmarks of Lincoln's greatness were his ability to grow and his willingness to change his mind. During the war, he had come to embrace the Radical position on immediate emancipation and the enlistment of black soldiers, both policies he had initially opposed. In 1864 he privately suggested to Governor Hahn that Louisiana allow some blacks to vote under its new constitution, singling out the educated, propertied free blacks of New Orleans and those who had served in the Union army. In April 1865, shortly before his death, Lincoln for the first time publicly stated his support for this kind of limited black suffrage... Andrew Johnson lacked Lincoln's qualities of greatness. While Lincoln had been open-minded, willing to listen to criticism, attuned to the currents of northern public opinion, and able to get along with all elements of his party, Johnson was stubborn, deeply racist, and insensitive to the opinions of others. If anyone was responsible for the wreck of his presidency, it was Johnson himself."

"Lincoln shared many of the prevailing prejudices of his era. But, he insisted, there was a bedrock principle of equality that transcended race. The equal right to the fruits of one's labor. There are many grounds for condemning the institution of slavery. Moral, religious, political, economic. Lincoln referred to all of them at one time or another. But ultimately he saw slavery as a form of theft, of one person appropriating the labor of another. Using a black woman as an illustration, he explained the kind of equality in which he believed, 'In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others'. Shortly before the 1860 election, Frederick Douglass offered a succinct summary of the dilemma confronting opponents of slavery like Lincoln, who worked within the political system rather than outside it. Abstractly, Douglass wrote, most northerners would agree that slavery was wrong. The challenge was to find a way of 'translating antislavery sentiment into antislavery action'. The constitution barred interference with slavery in the states where it already existed. For Lincoln, as for most Republicans, antislavery action meant not attacking slavery where it was but working to prevent slavery's westward expansion. Lincoln, however, did talk about a future without slavery. The aim of the Republican Party, he insisted, was to put the institution on the road to 'ultimate extinction', a phrase he borrowed from Henry Clay. Ultimate extinction could take a long time. Lincoln once said that slavery might survive for another hundred years. But to the south, Lincoln seemed as dangerous as an abolitionist, because he was committed to the eventual end of slavery. This was why his election in 1860 led inexorably to secession and civil war."

"No country can long endure if its foundations are not laid deep in the material prosperity which comes from thrift, from business energy and enterprise, from hard, unsparing effort in the fields of industrial activity; but neither was any nation ever yet truly great if it relied upon material prosperity alone. All honor must be paid to the architects of our material prosperity, to the great captains of industry who have built our factories and our railroads, to the strong men who toil for wealth with brain or hand; for great is the debt of the nation to these and their kind. But our debt is yet greater to the men whose highest type is to be found in a statesman like Lincoln, a soldier like Grant. They showed by their lives that they recognized the law of work, the law of strife; they toiled to win a competence for themselves and those dependent upon them; but they recognized that there were yet other and even loftier duties — duties to the nation."

"Lincoln genuinely abhorred slavery."

"Essentially what Lincoln said is slavery is a form of theft, the theft of labor, one person stealing another person’s labor without that person’s permission."

"Humility helps, character counts. Leadership does not knowingly encourage or feed ugly or debased appetites in us. Leadership lives by the American creed, “E pluribus unum.” From many one. American leadership looks to the world and just as Lincoln did, sees the family of man."

"My Lords, there are circumstances connected with this crime which, I think, aggravate its atrocity. President Lincoln was a man who, though not conspicuous before his election, had since displayed a character of so much integrity, so much sincerity and straightforwardness, and at the same time of so much kindness, that if any one could have been able to alleviate the pain and animosities which prevailed during the period of civil war, I believe that President Lincoln was that person. It was remarked of President Lincoln that he always felt disinclined to adopt harsh measures; and I am told that the commanders of his armies often complained that when they had passed a sentence which they thought no more than just the President was always disposed to temper its severity. Such a man this particular epoch required."

"He truly admitted the justice of my remarks, that he believed the exclusion of Jewish chaplains to have been altogether unintentional on the part of Congress (and) that something ought to be done to meet this case."

"There is no reason to doubt Mister Lincoln's perfect sincerity and his earnest belief in the doctrines which are held by the great majority of his countrymen."

"Once he called upon General McClellan, and the President went over to the General's house — a process which I assure you has been reversed long since — and General McClellan decided he did not want to see the President, and went to bed. Lincoln's friends criticized him severely for allowing a mere General to treat him that way. And he said, "All I want out of General McClellan is a victory, and if to hold his horse will bring it, I will gladly hold his horse.""

"When Lincoln, in the darkest days of the war, referred to America as the 'last best hope of earth', he was hardly boasting."

"You know that in his Charleston speech, an extract from which he has read, he declared that the negro belongs to an inferior race; is physically inferior to the white man, and should always be kept in an inferior position. I will now read to you what he said at Chicago on that point. In concluding his speech at that place, he remarked, 'My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desire to do, and I have only to say let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race, and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal'... He declared that all distinctions of race must be discarded and blotted out, because the negro stood on an equal footing with the white man; that if one man said the Declaration of Independence did not mean a negro when it declared all men created equal, that another man would say that it did not mean another man; and hence we ought to discard all difference between the negro race and all other races, and declare them all created equal."

"Mr. Lincoln was not only a great President, but a great man — too great to be small in anything. In his company I was never in any way reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color."

"The south was not far behind the north in recognizing Abraham Lincoln as the natural leader of the rising political sentiment of the country against slavery, and it was equally quick in its efforts to counteract and destroy his influence. Its papers teemed with the bitterest invectives against the 'backwoodsman of Illinois', the 'flat-boatman', the 'rail-splitter', the 'third-rate lawyer', and much else and worse."

"You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face."

"Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain of death come down but gradually, we should still have been smitten with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off without warning, not because of personal hate, for no man who knew Abraham Lincoln could hate him, but because of his fidelity to union and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious forever."

"Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress."

"Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mister Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mister Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery... Timid men said before Mister Lincoln's inauguration, that we have seen the last president of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, 'Let the Union slide'. Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of eight million cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath.... Surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln. His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly, a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single-handed with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave greater life, vigor, and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He was ready for any kind and any quality of work. What other young men dreaded in the shape of toil, he took hold of with the utmost cheerfulness."

"He has a face like a hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep-cut, criss-cross lines, and its doughnut complexion."

"Under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more."

"I assure you, that this inestimable memento of his Excellency will be retained in my possession while I live — an object of sacred interest — a token not merely of the kind consideration in which I have reason to know that the President was pleased to hold me personally, but as an indication of his humane interest in the welfare of my whole race."

"He treated me as a man... He did not let me feel for a moment that there was any difference in the color of our skins."

"On 1 January 1863, Pres Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. However, he did not do this because he was anti-racist, or out of the goodness of his heart: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and Black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favour of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people…" - Abraham Lincoln. He did it because he was a savvy political operator, as explained by historian Howard Zinn."

"I told him that he had been somewhat slow in proclaiming equal protection to our colored soldiers and prisoners; and he said that the country needed talking up to that point. He hesitated in regard to it, when he felt that the country was not ready for it. He knew that the colored man throughout this country was a despised man, a hated man, and that if he at first came out with such a proclamation, all the hatred which is poured on the head of the negro race would be visited on his administration. He said that there was preparatory work needed, and that that preparatory work had now been done. And he said, 'Remember this Mr. Douglass; remember that Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner are recent events; and that these were necessary to prepare the way for this very proclamation of mine.' I thought it was reasonable, but came to the conclusion that while Abraham Lincoln will not go down to posterity as Abraham the Great, or as Abraham the Wise, or as Abraham the Eloquent,—although he is all three—wise, great, and eloquent he will go down to posterity if the country is saved, as Honest Abraham... and going down thus, his name may be written anywhere in this wide world of ours, side by side with that of Washington, without disparaging the latter."

"It is said we can conquer without emancipation. The rebellion is almost crushed — our armies are pressing southward — the end approaches, when all things will be restored as of old. The South, having been deceived in regard to Mr. Lincoln and the aims of the Republican party, went to war to protect slavery. Now, perhaps, they are beginning to see that Mr. Lincoln is not so far from a slave-catcher, after all. The loyalty of the South is a myth. It will of course grow, as our armies advance, because between hanging and loyalty the advocates of a sinking cause can have but one choice"

"The characteristic which struck me most was his superabundance of common sense. His power of managing men, of deciding and avoiding difficult questions, surpassed that of any man I ever met. A keen insight of human nature had been cultivated by the trials and struggles of his early life. He knew the people and how to reach them better than any man of his time. I heard him tell a great many stories, many of which would not do exactly for the drawing-room; but for the person he wished to reach, and the object he desired to accomplish with the individual, the story did more than any argument could have done."

"Abraham Lincoln was a noble man, but he was not an abolitionist, and what he said in reference to the Negro was with due regard to his circumscribed environs, and, for the time, was doubtless the quintessence of wisdom, but he was not an oracle who spoke for all coming ages, and we are not bound by what he thought prudent to say in a totally different situation half a century ago."

"I have thought that perhaps we were not asked to reflect on the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation because we might realize that we were never really emancipated. But anyway, at least we might be able to understand the dialectics of emancipation, because we still live with the popular myth that Lincoln freed the slaves and that continues to be perpetuated in popular culture, even by the film Lincoln. Lincoln did not free the slaves. We also live with the myth that the mid-twentieth-century civil rights movement freed the second-class citizens. Civil rights, of course, constitute an essential element of the freedom that was demanded at that time, but it was not the whole story, and maybe we'll get to that later. Eric Foner, in his book called The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, wrote that, and I am quoting: “The Emancipation Proclamation is perhaps the most misunderstood of the documents that have shaped American history. Contrary to legend, Lincoln did not free the nearly four million slaves with a stroke of his pen. It had no bearing on slaves in the four border states, since they were not in rebellion. The Proclamation also exempted certain parts of the Confederacy occupied by the Union. All told, it left perhaps 750,000 slaves in bondage." And of course popular narratives about the end of slavery produced by the pronouncing of this emancipation document by Abraham Lincoln erase the agency of Black people themselves. But, there is something for which Lincoln should be applauded, I believe. And it is that he was shrewd enough to know that the only hope of winning the Civil War resided in creating the opportunity for Black people to fight for their own freedom, and that was the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation."

"Abraham Lincoln, the country's first Republican president, led the Union to victory in the Civil War and put slavery on the road to extinction. After the war, the GOP was responsible for constitutional amendments that finished off slavery, made African Americans citizens and put the ballot in the hands of black men. It is one of the great tragedies of our time that that party, the party of Lincoln and liberty, is long gone."

"Abraham Lincoln and others recoiled from the idea of government as a prop for the rich. In organizing the Republican Party, they highlighted the equality of opportunity promised in the Declaration of Independence and warned that a healthy economy depended on widespread prosperity. Northerners and hardscrabble westerners flocked to that vision, and elected Lincoln to the White House in 1860."

"If so men's memories not a monument be, None shalt thou have. Warm hearts, and not cold stone, Must mark thy grave, or thou shalt lie, unknown. Marbles keep not themselves; how then, keep thee?"

"In this temple As in the hearts of the people For whom he saved the Union The memory of Abraham Lincoln Is enshrined forever"

"The first duty of a government is to be true to itself. This does not mean perfection, it means a plan to strive for perfection. It means loyalty to ideals. The ideals of America were set out in the Declaration of Independence and adopted in the Constitution. They did not represent perfection at hand, but perfection found. The fundamental principle was freedom. The fathers knew that this was not yet apprehended. They formed a government firm in the faith that it was ever to press toward this high mark. In selfishness, in greed, in lust for gain, it turned aside. Enslaving others, it became itself enslaved. Bondage in one part consumed freedom in all parts. The government of the fathers, ceasing to be true to itself, was perishing. Five score and ten years ago, that divine providence which infinite repetition has made only the more a miracle, sent into the world a new life destined to save a nation. No star, no sign foretold his coming. About his cradle all was poor and mean, save only the source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When she faded away in his tender years from her deathbed in humble poverty, she endowed her son with greatness. There can be no proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother. Into his origin, as into his life, men long have looked and wondered. In wisdom great, but in humility greater, in justice strong, but in compassion stronger, he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth. He overcame evil with good. His presence filled the nation. He broke the might of oppression. He restored a race to its birthright. His mortal frame has vanished, but his spirit increases with the increasing years the richest legacy of the greatest century. Men show by what they worship what they are. It is no accident that before the great example of American manhood, our people stand with respect and reverence. In Abraham Lincoln is revealed our ideal; the hope of our country fulfilled. He was the incarnation of what America was to be. Through him, the Almighty bestowed upon the nation a new birth of freedom that this dear land of ours might be returned to the health of its fathers. We are the beneficiaries of a life of surpassing service. Wise in wisdom and gentle in gentleness. Freedom has many sides and angles. Human slavery has been swept away. With security of personal rights has come security of property rights. The freedom of the human mind is recognized in the right to free speech and free press. The public schools have made education possible for all and ignorance a disgrace. In political affairs, the vote of the humblest has long counted for as much as the vote of the most exalted. We are working towards the day when, in our industrial life, equal honor shall fall to equal endeavor."

"Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, walked through the streets of Richmond and respectfully lifted his hat to the men who blacked Louis Wigfall's boots and curried his horse. What did it mean? It meant that the truest American president we have ever had, the companion of Washington in our love and honor, recognized that the poorest man, however outraged, however ignorant, however despised, however black, was, as a man, his equal. The child of the American people was their most prophetic man, because, whether as small shop-keeper, as flat-boatman, as volunteer captain, as honest lawyer, as defender of the Declaration, as President of the United States, he knew by the profoundest instinct and the widest experience and reflection, that in the most vital faith of this country it is just as honorable for an honest man to curry a horse and black a boot as it is to raise cotton or corn, to sell molasses or cloth, to practice medicine or law, to gamble in stocks or speculate in petroleum. He knew the European doctrine that the king makes the gentleman; but he believed with his whole soul the doctrine, the American doctrine, that worth makes the man."

"That nation has not lived in vain which has given the world Washington and Lincoln, the best great men and the greatest good men whom history can show. * * * You cry out in the words of Bunyan, "So Valiant-for-Truth passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.""

"We have never for a moment doubted that Mr. Lincoln, in whom there never was an impulse of unlawful ambition, a shadow of dishonesty, a wish that was not for the welfare of his country ... is, his errors and faults all included, the wisest, the safest, the most unselfish — the man most fitted for the time in which he lives, and for the desperate dangers against which he contends."

"Abraham Lincoln was walking their streets; and, worst of all, that plain, honest-hearted man was recognizing the 'niggers' as human beings by returning their salutations! The walk was long, and the President halted a moment to rest. 'May de good Lord bless you, President Linkum!' said an old negro, removing his hat, and bowing with tears of joy rolling down his cheeks. The President removed his own hat, and bowed in silence; but it was a bow which upset the forms, laws, customs, and ceremonies of centuries. It was a death-shock to chivalry, and a mortal wound to caste. Recognize a nigger! Faugh! A woman in an adjoining house beheld it, and turned from the scene in unspeakable disgust. There were men in the crowd who had daggers in their eyes; but the chosen assassin was not there, the hour for the damning work had not come, and that great-hearted man passed on to the executive mansion of the late Confederacy."

"I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually."

"Lo, as I gaze, the statured man, Built up from yon large hand appears: A type that nature wills to plan But once in all a people's years."

"One space on the wall was reserved for the president's most influential predecessor. I chose Lincoln. He'd had the most trying job of any president, preserving the Union. Some asked why I didn't put Dad's portrait in that spot. "Number forty-one hangs in my heart," I said. "Sixteen is on the wall.""

"Perhaps nowhere do we learn more about Lincoln even now than in a portrait that I talked about last month off the coast of Malta before meeting Chairman Gorbachev. It is, as this one is, by George Healy, and hangs on the wall of my office upstairs. And in it you see the agony and the greatness of a man who nightly fell on his knees to ask the help of God. The painting shows two of his generals and an admiral meeting near the end of a war that pitted brother against brother. And outside at the moment a battle rages. And yet what we see in the distance is a rainbow — a symbol of hope, of the passing of the storm. The painting's name:The Peacemakers. And for me, this is a constant reassurance that the cause of peace will triumph and that ours can be the future that Lincoln gave his life for: a future free of both tyranny and fear."

"Had Japan been a tenth as wise as Abraham Lincoln, had Hitler been a hundredth part as sensible, we today, the United States and England, would not have a chance in this war. Had those two enemies of ours coveted the lands upon subject peoples dwell today and had they whispered the magic word freedom to those peoples, they might have set half the world against us in a moment. But they have lost because they attacked lands already free, and because they have enslaved peoples accustomed to freedom. By this one thing alone, if by no other, they are doomed. They have misread the hearts and minds of men. By their enslavement of the peoples whom they have made subject by force of arms, they have aroused against themselves a greater force than can be found in any army, in any weapon. It is this- the will of men everywhere to be free. Let us learn today from Abraham Lincoln, as we fight this war still so far from victory. He could not win that war until he lit the fire in the hearts of men and women enslaved. Nothing had been enough to make men rise up and shout aloud for victory until that moment. A few men like war and enjoy it as a game. But most men and all women hate war. They will not fight with their whole hearts unless they are set aflame. And the torch is always the same words. Whisper those words and men and women will shout them aloud and sing them as they march. The words are simple but they are the most potent in the universe- they are the spiritual dynamite of victory. The words? "All persons held as slaves... are and henceforward shall be free.""

"I suppose Abraham Lincoln knew that was what would happen. He was very wise in the ways of men. He knew how people think and feel. Doubtless he knew that deeper than anything else in the hearts of men everywhere is the wish for simple freedom- freedom without any promises even of protection, of food, of security- just freedom. He knew that those people, so long bond, would leave even comfortable sheltered places where masters were kind, if they could only be free."