Lincoln's Legacy

Abraham Lincoln

"I do not discuss the tariff, I know that if we buy goods made in America we have the goods and we have the money, and if we buy goods not made in America some one else has our money.”

"This love of liberty which God has planted in us constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence. It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts, our army, and our navy. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and we have planted the seeds of despotism at our very doors."

"Good boys who to their books apply,
Will all be great men by and by."

"I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith."

"We have forgotten God!"

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us to the end, do our duty as we understand it."

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self—sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

"If it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher; as a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide."

"Let [the Constitution] be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges, let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs, let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation."

"Let the people know the truth, and the country is safe."
"Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we will succeed."
"Let us dare to do our duty as we understand it."
"Bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible; still while they continue in force for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed."


"That the Almighty does make use of human agencies and directly intervenes in human affairs is one of the plainest statements in the Bible. I have had so many evidences of his direction, so many instances when I have been controlled by some power other than my own will, that I cannot doubt that this power comes from above. I am satisfied that when the Almighty wants me to do, or not to do, a particular thing, He finds a way of letting me know it."

"My faith is greater than yours. I not only believe that Providence is not unmindful of the struggle in which this nation is engaged, that if we do not do right God will let us go our own way to ruin; and that if we do right He will lead us safely out of this wilderness, crown our arms with victory and restore our dissevered Union, as you have expressed your belief; but I also believe He will compel us to do right in order that He may do these things, not so much because we desire them, as that they accord with His plans in dealing with this nation, in the midst of which He means to establish justice.

"All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother."

A friend was talking with him regarding the condition of the country, and so on, and made the remark, "I hope that the Lord is on our side." "Well," said President Lincoln, "I do not worry about that at all; I know that the Lord is always on the side of right. What worries me most is to know if we are on the Lord's side."

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable, it is a positive good in the world; that some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

"Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the revolution never to violate, in the least particular, the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of '76 did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor. Let every man remember that to violate the laws is to trample on the blood of his fathers and to tear the charter of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries and in colleges. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in the legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice -- in short, let it become the political religion of this nation."

"I know there is a God, and that he hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that his hand is in it. If he has a place, a work for me--and I think he has--I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right; for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God."

The great emacipator was no enemy to the "Mormon" people. When asked, after his election as president, how he intended to treat the "Mormon" question--which was bothering the politicians as well as the priests--he answered in his quaint, characteristic way: "I intend to treat it as a farmer on the frontier would treat an old water-soaked elm log lying upon his land--too heavy to move, too knotty to split, and too wet to burn. I'm going to plow round it." And he did.