I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

I had as well be killed running as die standing

Viewing the man from the genuine abolitionist ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed cold, tardy, weak and unequal to the task. But, viewing him from the sentiments of his people, which as a statesman he was bound to respect, then his actions were swift, bold, radical and decisive. Taking the man in the whole, balancing the tremendous magnitude of the situation, and the necessary means to ends, Infinite Wisdom has rarely sent a man into the world more perfectly suited to his mission than Abraham Lincoln.

They who study mankind with a whip in their hands will always go wrong.

I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity...