Thaddeus Stevens: I don't hold with equality in all things, just equality before the law, nothing more.
William Seward: Gentleman, you have a visitor.
W.N. Bilbo: [checking his friend cards] Oh my God, goddamn...
W.N. Bilbo: [President Lincoln walks in] I'll be fucked.
Abraham Lincoln: I wouldn't bet against it, Mr...?
W.N. Bilbo: W.N.Bilbo.
Abraham Lincoln: Yeah,
Mr. Bilbo. Gentlemen...
Robert Latham: Sir.
W.N. Bilbo: Why are you here? No offense, but Mr. Seward's banished the very mention of your name, he won't even let us use fifty-cent pieces 'cause they got your face on 'em.
Abraham Lincoln: The Secretary of State here tells me that, uh... you got eleven Democrats in the bag.
That's encouraging.
Richard Schell: Oh, you've got no cause to be encouraged. Sir. Uh...
Robert Latham: Are we being... fired?
Abraham Lincoln: [quoting Shakespeare] 'We have heard the chimes of midnight, Master Shallow.' I'm here to alert you boys that the great day of reckoning is nigh upon us.
Abraham Lincoln: All we've done is show the world that democracy isn't chaos. That there is a great, invisible strength in a people's union. Say we've shown that a people can endure awful sacrifice and yet cohere. Mightn't that save at least the idea of democracy to aspire to? Eventually to become worthy of?
Robert Lincoln: I have to do this! And I will do it, and I don't need your permission to enlist!
Abraham Lincoln: That same speech has been made by how many sons to how many fathers since this war began? 'I don't need your damn permission, you miserable old goat! I'm gonna enlist anyhow!' What wouldn't those numberless fathers have given to be able to say
to their sons, as I say now to mine, I am commander-in-chief, so in point of fact, without my permission, you ain't enlisting in nothing, nowhere young man!
Robert Lincoln: It's mama you're scared of, not me getting killed!
Abraham Lincoln: [Lincoln slaps him, then tries to hug him; Robert pushes him away]
Robert Lincoln: I
have to do this. And I will, or I will feel ashamed of myself for the rest of my life. Whether or not you fought is what matters. And not just to other people, but to myself. I won't be you, Pa. I can't do that. But I don't want to be nothing.
Thaddeus Stevens: Lincoln the inveterate dawdler, Lincoln the Southerner, Lincoln the capitulating compromiser, our adversary, and leader of the God forsaken Republican Party, our party... Abraham Lincoln has asked us to work with him to accomplish the death of slavery in America. Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment.
Abraham Lincoln: [greeting a pair of visitors from Jefferson City] I heard tell once of a Jefferson City lawyer who had a parrot that would wake him each morning crying out 'today's the day the world shall end as scripture has foretold'. And one day, the lawyer shot him for the sake of peace and quiet I presume, thus fulfilling, for the bird at least, his prophecy.
[the
guests don't laugh]
[Giving a speech at a dedication, Lincoln stands beside the flagpole, and with great ceremony takes off his hat, removes a piece of paper from inside and unfolds it, then puts on his glasses]
Abraham Lincoln: [reading] The part assigned to me is to raise the flag which, if there be no fault in the machinery, I will do. And, when up, it shall be for the people to keep it up.
[takes off his glasses and re-folds the paper]
Abraham Lincoln: That's my speech.
[laughter]
Thaddeus Stevens: I haven't noticed you. I'm a Republican, and you, Coughdrop, are a Democrat?
Abraham Lincoln: When the people disagree, bringing them together requires going slow until they're ready to...
Thaddeus Stevens: Shit on the people and what they want and what they're ready for. I don't give a goddamn about the people and what they want. This is the face of someone who has fought long and hard for the *good* of the people without caring
much for any of 'em. And now I look a lot worse without my wig.
Abraham Lincoln: I did say *some* colored men, the intelligent, the educated, and veterans, I qualified it.
James Ashley: Mr. Stevens is furious. He wants to know why you qualified it.
Schuyler Colfax: No one heard the "intelligent" or the "educated" part. All they heard was the first time any president has ever made mention of Negro
voting.
Abraham Lincoln: Still, I wish I'd mentioned it in a better speech.
James Ashley: Mr. Stevens also wants to know why you didn't make a better speech.