<p>Hook</p><p>Final paragraph of Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address. Delivered March 4, 1861</p><p>“I am loath to close. 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 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.”</p><p>Attack on Fort Sumter, April 12-13 1861</p><p>QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. Inquiry data set</p><p>Excerpt from CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens, Cornerstone Address. Delivered at a rally on March 21, 1861</p><p>…The new Constitution [of the Confederate States of America] has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution… </p><p>Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.” Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in 1862: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!” </p><p>QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.</p><p>QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture. Excerpt from John Brown’s speech to a Virginia courthouse after his conviction on charges of treason, first-degree murder, and inciting insurrection. Delivered November 2, 1859</p><p>This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. …Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments--I submit; so let it be done! QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.</p><p>QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.</p><p>Source: Center for the Liberal Arts, University of Virginia Stephen Douglass, First Stephen-Douglass Debate, August 21, 1858. Stephen Douglass ran against Abraham Lincoln on the grounds of </p><p>“[U]niformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possible or desirable. If uniformity had been adopted when the Government was established, it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or else the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere. ...</p><p>Now, I hold that Illinois had a right to abolish and prohibit slavery as she did, and I hold that </p><p>Kentucky has the same right to continue and protect slavery that Illinois had to abolish it. I hold that New York had as much right to abolish slavery as Virginia has to continue it, and that each and every State of this Union is a sovereign power, with the right to do as it pleases upon this question of slavery, and upon all its domestic institutions. ... And why can we not adhere to the great principle of self-government, upon which our institutions were originally based. ("We can.") I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave </p><p>States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall.” Bleeding Kansas</p><p>Charles Sumner, Excerpt from “The Crime Against Kansas.” Delivered to the United States Senate May 20, 1856. Delivered during the “Bleeding Kansas” Crisis. Kansas, newly admitted to the Union, was given the choice to be either a slave or free state through the principle of popular sovereignty. This resulted in activists on both sides flocking to Kansas to profess their view, and included pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces exchanging gunfire. The speech so infuriated Rep. Preston Brooks that he stormed into the Senate chamber and beat Sen. Sumner with a cane. </p><p>“The wickedness, which I now begin to expose, is immeasurably aggravated by the motive which prompted it. Not in any common lust for power did this uncommon tragedy have its origin. It is the rape of a virgin Territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of Slavery; and it may be clearly traced to a depraved desire for a new Slave </p><p>State, hideous offspring of such a crime, in the hope of adding to the power of Slavery in the National Government. Yes, Sir, when the whole world, alike Christian and Turk, is rising up to condemn this wrong, making it a hissing to the nations, here in our Republic, force -- ay, Sir, FORCE -- is openly employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution, and all for the sake of political power”</p><p>QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.</p>