You can always lie to others and hide your actions from them... but you can not fool yourself

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS

I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia.

Everybody appreciates a compliment.

I turn, then, and look to the American people and to that God who has never forsaken them.

I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself.

We must settle this question now -- whether in a free government the minority have the right to break it up whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.