Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865
Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865
The power here isn't just historical, it is the raw machinery of American prose. Lincoln wrote with an axe: every sentence stripped to its bone. This collection traces his voice from a 23-year-old newspaper editorial on education to his second inaugural address, where he offered mercy to a broken nation. We hear him argue cases in Illinois courthouses, campaign for the Senate against Stephen Douglas, and forge the language that still defines what America means. The letters reveal a man who laughed easily, grieved deeply, and wrote to ordinary citizens with the same care he gave to policy. Here too are the telegrams to battlefield generals, the condolences to widows, the fragments of thought he never meant to publish. What emerges is not a monument but a man, ambitious, uncertain, morally certain that slavery was a sin the nation must confess. For anyone who wants to understand how one person can change the course of history through words alone.
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“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.””
— Abraham Lincoln
“I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.””
— Abraham Lincoln
“I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.””
— Abraham Lincoln
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.””
— Abraham Lincoln
“let every man remember that to violate the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the charter of his own and his children's liberty.””
— Abraham Lincoln
“I will not say that we may not sooner or later be compelled to meet force by force; but the time has not yet come, and if we are true to ourselves, may never come. Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Therefore let the legions of slavery use bullets; but let us wait patiently till November, and fire ballots at them in return; and by that peaceful policy, I believe we shall ultimately win.””
— Abraham Lincoln
“being used now, in order to force slavery on to Kansas; for it cannot be done in any other way. [Sensation.] The””
— Abraham Lincoln
“Advancement”
— Abraham Lincoln
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Lincoln, Abraham. Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865. Lex, lex-books.com/book/speeches-letters-of-abraham-lincoln-1832-1865-f0553eaf-e679-4199-bf41-98b597f0d0c3.Lincoln, A. (n.d.). Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/speeches-letters-of-abraham-lincoln-1832-1865-f0553eaf-e679-4199-bf41-98b597f0d0c3Lincoln, Abraham. Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/speeches-letters-of-abraham-lincoln-1832-1865-f0553eaf-e679-4199-bf41-98b597f0d0c3.
