Nor must Uncle Sam's Web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broadbay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks.

Wise statesmen ... established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity should look up again at the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.

What I want is to get done what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly.

You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live.

We were proclaiming ourselves political hypocrites before the world, by thus fostering Human Slavery and proclaiming ourselves, at the same time, the sole friends of Human Freedom.

I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.