"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it further until it becomes alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South."
"We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot's grave to every loving heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."
"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free."
"'The Father of Waters' again goes unvexed to the sea."