Quotes

Abraham Lincoln: Shall we stop this bleeding?

Mary Todd Lincoln: No one is loved as much as you by the people. Don't waste that power.

Abraham Lincoln: I am the president of the United States of America, clothed in immense power! You will procure me those votes!

Thaddeus Stevens: Trust? Gentlemen, you seem to have forgotten that our chosen career is politics.

Edwin Stanton: [seeing Lincoln begin to address the room as news comes in from Wilmington] You're going to tell one of your stories! I can't stand to hear another one of your stories!

Mary Todd Lincoln: Seward can't do it; you must. Because if you fail to acquire the necessary votes, woe unto you, sir. You will answer to me.

Mary Todd Lincoln: No one has ever lived who knows better than you the proper placement of footfalls on treacherous paths.

George Yeaman: Votes for women?

Abraham Lincoln: [to Ulysses S. Grant] Each of us has made it possible for the other to do terrible things.

Abraham Lincoln: Do you think we choose the times into which we are born? Or do we fit the times we are born into?

Abraham Lincoln: I wish He had chosen an instrument more wieldy than the House of Representatives.

Abraham Lincoln: [Lincoln quoting Falstaff from Shakespeare's "King Henry the Fourth"] We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.

Abraham Lincoln: Back when I rode the legal circuit in Illinois, I defended a woman from Metmora named Melissa Goings, 77 years-old. They said she murdered her husband, he was 83. He was choking her and she grabbed a-hold of a stick of firewood and fractured his skull and he died. In his will he wrote: 'I suspect she has killed me. If I get over it, I will have revenge.' No one was keen to see her convicted, he was that kind of husband. I asked the prosecuting attorney if I might have a short conference with my client. And she and I went into a room in the courthouse, but I alone emerged. The window in the room was found to be wide open. It was believed the old lady may have climbed out of it. I told the bailiff right before. I left her in the room she asked me where she could get a good drink of water, and I told her Tennessee. Mrs. Goings was seen no more in Metamora. Enough justice had been done; they even forgave the bondsman her bail.

John Usher: I'm afraid I don't see...

Abraham Lincoln: I decided that the Constitution gives me war powers, but no one knows just exactly what those powers are. Some say they don't exist. I don't know. I decided I needed them to exist to uphold my oath to protect the Constitution, which I decided meant that I could take the rebel's slaves from them as property confiscated in war. That might recommend to suspicion that I agree with the rebs that their slaves are property in the first place. Of course I don't, never have, I'm glad to see any man free, and if calling a man property, or war contraband, does the trick... Why I caught at the opportunity. Now here's where it gets truly slippery. I use the law allowing for the seizure of property in a war knowing it applies only to the property of governments and citizens of belligerent nations. But the South ain't a nation, that's why I can't negotiate with'em. If in fact the Negroes are property according to law, have I the right to take the rebels' property from 'em, if I insist they're rebels only, and not citizens of a belligerent country? And slipperier still: I maintain it ain't our actual Southern states in rebellion but only the rebels living in those states, the laws of which states remain in force. The laws of which states remain in force. That means, that since it's states' laws that determine whether Negroes can be sold as slaves, as property - the Federal government doesn't have a say in that, least not yet then Negroes in those states are slaves, hence property, hence my war powers allow me to confiscate'em as such. So I confiscated 'em. But if I'm a respecter of states' laws, how then can I legally free'em with my Proclamation, as I done, unless I'm cancelling states' laws? I felt the war demanded it; my oath demanded it; I felt right with myself; and I hoped it was legal to do it, I'm hoping still. Two years ago I proclaimed these people emancipated - "then, hence forward and forever free."But let's say the courts decide I had no authority to do it. They might well decide that. Say there's no amendment abolishing slavery. Say it's after the war, and I can no longer use my war powers to just ignore the courts' decisions, like I sometimes felt I had to do. Might those people I freed be ordered back into slavery? That's why I'd like to get the Thirteenth Amendment through the House, and on its way to ratification by the states, wrap the whole slavery thing up, forever and aye. As soon as I'm able. Now. End of this month. And I'd like you to stand behind me. Like my cabinet's most always done.

Abraham Lincoln: [pounds his hand on a table as his cabinet squabbles] I can't listen to this anymore. I can't accomplish a goddamn thing of any worth until we cure ourselves of slavery and end this pestilential war! I wonder if any of you or anyone else knows it. I know! I need this! This amendment is that cure! We've stepped out upon the world stage now. Now! With the fate of human dignity in our hands. Blood's been spilled to afford us this moment now! Now! Now! And you grouse so and heckle and dodge about like pettifogging Tammany Hall hucksters!

Clerk - Edward McPherson: Roll call concludes. Voting is completed. Now...

Schuyler Colfax: Mr. clerk? Please call my name. I want to cast a vote.

George Pendleton: I object! The Speaker doesn't vote.

Clerk - Edward McPherson: The Speaker may vote if he so chooses.

George Pendleton: It is highly unusual, sir.

Schuyler Colfax: This isn't usual, Mr. Pendleton. This is history.

Abraham Lincoln: [giving a speech at a dedication raising the flag] The part assigned to me is to raise the flag which, if there be no fault in the machinery, I will do. And, when up, it shall be for the people to keep it up. That's my speech.

Thaddeus Stevens: I don't hold with equality in all things, just equality before the law, nothing more.

Thaddeus Stevens: This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the good of the people without caring much for any of 'em. And I look a lot worse without the wig.

Thaddeus Stevens: I haven't noticed you. I'm a Republican, and you, Coughdrop, are a Democrat?

Abraham Lincoln: Liberality all around. No punishment, I don't want that. And the leaders - Jeff and the rest of 'em - if they escape, leave the country while my back's turned, that wouldn't upset me none. When peace comes it mustn't just be hangings.

Montgomery Blair: They'll vote for this rash and dangerous amendment only if every other possibility is exhausted.

Ulysses S. Grant: If you want to discuss peace with President Lincoln, consider revisions.

Alexander Stephens: If we're not to discuss a truce between warring nations, what in heaven's name can we discuss?

Ulysses S. Grant: Terms of surrender.

W.N. Bilbo: The kind that hates niggers, hates God for making niggers.

Abraham Lincoln: Thunder forth, God of War!

Senator Bluff Wade: Whalers?

James Ashley: That's what he said.

Senator Bluff Wade: The man's never been near a whale ship in his life!

Abraham Lincoln: A compass I learnt when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you true north from where your standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what's the use of knowing true north?

[first lines]

Abraham Lincoln: It's nighttime. Ship's move by some terrible power at terrific speed. And though it's imperceptible in the darkness, I have an intuition that we're headed towards a shore. No one else seems to be aboard the vessel. I'm keenly aware of my aloneness.

Abraham Lincoln: [quoting Hamlet] "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

Abraham Lincoln: Hmm. I reckon it's the speed that's strange to me. I'm used to going at a deliberate pace. I should space you, Molly. I shouldn't tell you my dreams.

Mary Todd Lincoln: I don't want to be spared if you aren't And you spare me nothing.

Abraham Lincoln: When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow until they're ready to...

Thaddeus Stevens: Shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for. I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want. This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the *good* of the people without caring much for any of 'em. And now I look a lot worse without my wig.

Ulysses S. Grant: [to Lincoln] By outward appearance, you're 10 years older than you were a year ago.