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Fourscore and seven
years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. |
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… that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a
new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth. |
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Whenever I hear any
one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. |
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Leave nothing for
tomorrow which can be done today. |
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I have stepped out
upon this platform that I may see you and that you may see me, and in the arrangement I
have the best of the bargain. |
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We are not enemies,
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break
our bonds of affection. |
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What is conservatism
? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried ? |
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In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. |
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I happen temporarily
to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look
to come here as my father’s child has. |
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I am not a know
– nothing. That is certain. How could I be ? … As a nation, we began by
declaring that ‘all men are created equal’. We now practically read it,
"all men are created equal, except Negroes." |
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