Cooper Union Speech (February 27, 1860)
“But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights.”
“Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man—such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care—such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance…”
First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861)
“…I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.”
“Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever—“
“…It follows from these views that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union,”
“I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and, to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.”
“I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend, and maintain itself.”
“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Letter to Reverdy Johnson (July 26, 1862)
“It seems the Union feeling in Louisiana is being crushed out by the course of General Phelps.”
“They very well know the way to avert all this is simply to take their place in the Union upon the old terms.”
“You remember telling me the day after the Baltimore mob in April 1861, that it would crush all Union feeling in Maryland for me to attempt bringing troops over Maryland soil to Washington. I brought the troops notwithstanding, and yet there was Union feeling enough left to elect a Legislature the next autumn which in turn elected a very excellent Union U. S. Senator!”
Letter to Williamson Durley (October 3, 1845)
“I was glad to hear you say that you intend to attempt to bring about, at the next election in Putnam, a union of the whigs proper, and such of the liberty men, as are whigs in principle on all questions save only that of slavery. So far as I can perceive, by such union, neither party need yield any thing, on the point in difference between them.”
“I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone;”
House Divided Speech (January 16, 1858)
“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.”
Letter to Albert Hodges (April 4, 1864)
“They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element.”
“And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns.”
Letter to Horace Greeley (August 22, 1862)
“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.”If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.”
“f there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it;”
“What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
Blind Memorandum (August 23, 1864)
“Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration;”
Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)
“While the inaugeral address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation.”
“One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it.”
“To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”