The Zealot and the Emancipator Quotes

“where the ballot-box, more precious than any work in ivory or marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“God worked in mysterious ways; Lincoln wasn’t perfect, but he was perfectly suited to his task. “Taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“He noted that the same summer that witnessed the Constitutional Convention saw the passage of the Northwest Ordinance barring slavery north of the Ohio River.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“also stressed the dignity of the white working man. “I hold that if there is any one thing that can be proved to be the will of God by external nature around us, without reference to revelation, it is the proposition that whatever any one man earns with his hands and by the sweat of his brow, he shall enjoy in peace,” Lincoln told his Cincinnati audience. “I say that whereas God Almighty has given every man one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands adapted to furnish food for that mouth, if anything can be proved to be the will of Heaven, it is proved by this fact, that that mouth is to be fed by those hands, without being interfered with by any other man who has also his mouth to feed and his hands to labor with.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“At Grinnell, named for Josiah Grinnell, Iowa’s leading abolitionist, the reception couldn’t have been more supportive.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“It was about the end of December, 1857, or the beginning of January, 1858, when we reached Cedar county, the journey thus consuming about a month of time. We stopped at a village called Springdale, in that county, where in a settlement principally composed of Quakers, we remained.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“Allowing the extension of slavery, leading to the creation of new slave states, would magnify the voting advantage the Constitution had granted to slaveholders from the start. Slaves could not vote, but three-fifths of their number counted toward representation in the lower house of Congress. As a result, white Southerners wielded more power per person than white Northerners. Lincoln cited two states: South Carolina and Maine. Each had six representatives and therefore eight presidential electors. “In the control of the government, the two states are equals precisely.” But Maine had more than twice as many white people as South Carolina. “Thus each white man in South Carolina is more than the double of any man in Maine.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“Douglas noted the uproar with wry resignation. “I could travel from Boston to Chicago by the light of my own effigy,” he observed.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“I have often been asked how I felt when I first found myself on free soil,” he wrote later. The answer was simple yet profound. “A new world had opened upon me,” he said. “I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom

“Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.”
― H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom