A prominent Chicago politician, Justin Butterfield, asked if he was against the Mexican War, replied: no, I opposed one War [the War of 1812]. That was enough for me. I am now perpetually in favor of...
We shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving.
The U.S. Senate presented the most powerful obstacle to any progressive reform. Because senators at the time were elected by state legislatures rather than by popular vote, the majority of senators ow...
In Life magazine in the mid-fifties, Robert Couglan railed against the disease of working women, who insisted on ruining their children and their family life.
If the continuing problems created by the Industrial Age were not addressed, he warned, the country would eventually be sundered by those dreadful lines of division that set the haves and the have-not...
I have ever preferred that a man should tell me face to face that he will or will not do a thing, than to promise to do it and then to not do it.
He then took his listeners back to their common beginnings, to the founding of the nation, unraveling a narrative to demonstrate that when the Constitution was adopted, the plain, unmistakable spirit...
Having hope, writes Daniel Goleman in his study of emotional intelligence, means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challen...
As he had done so many times before, Lincoln withstood the storm of defeat by replacing anguish over an unchangeable past with hope in an uncharted future.
Temporizing
Precocious
National press. He called them by their first names, invited them
Flour and lumber. The entire settlement consisted of a few hundred people, fifteen log cabins, a tavern, a church, a blacksmith, a schoolmaster, a preacher, and a
The idea that the congressional Democrats have a responsibility for taking the national Democratic platform and program and trying to push it through the Congress is simply crazy. A political party at...
The habits of mind Roosevelt developed early in his academic career would serve him well throughout his life. As soon as he received an assignment for a paper or project, he would set to work, never l...
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another....
The Know Nothings fought to delay citizenship for the new immigrants and bar them from voting.
Sam Parks was simply a paid agent for his union, receiving the same salary as an ordinary workman in his trade. In reality, Baker tracked him riding about in his cab, wearing diamonds, appearing on th...
Presidents and Kings are not apt to see flaws in their own arguments, he wrote, but fortunately for the Union, it had a President, at this critical juncture, who combined a logical intellect with an u...
In this first foray into politics, Lincoln also pledged that if his opinions on any subject turned out to be erroneous, he stood ready to renounce them. With this commitment, Lincoln revealed early on...