In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for, and against the same thing at the same time.

Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody.

I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

Such will be a great lesson of peace: teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war.

We know nothing of what will happen in future, but by the analogy of experience.

War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.

The war, the American Civil War of 1861-1865, would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits.

There is really no crisis except an artificial one...If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the trouble will come to an end.