By Labor the North has subdued Nature, changed a parsimonious soil to fertility, built dwellings for almost her whole population, raised the school-house, established the Church, encircled the globe with her ships, and made her books and her papers to be as blades of grass and as leave of the Summer for number. But in the South, labor, a badge of shame, is the father of misery. The slave labors, but with no cheer—it is not the road to respectability, it will honor him with no citizens’ trust, it brings no bread to his family, no grain to his garner, no leisure in after-days, no books or papers to his children. It opens no school-house door, builds no church, rears for him no factory, lays no keel, fills no bank, earns no acres. With sweat and toil and ignorance he consumes his life, to pour the earnings into channels from which he does no drink, into hands that never honor him. But perpetually rob and often torment.

No defender of slavery, I concede that it has its benevolent aspects in lifting the Negro from savagery and helping prepare him for that eventual freedom which is surely written in the Book of Fate

A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position

Slavery is now no where more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty

he modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin... But if you want to continue to be slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of anther's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live

No pope ever condemned slavery

Another of my wishes is to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves

Slavery can only be abolished by raising the character of the people who compose the nation; and that can be done only by showing them a higher one

We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued. The slaves were undeniably a element of strength to those who had their service, and we must decide whether that element should be with us or against us. Emancipation, will strike at the heart of the rebellion Said to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles