Gore Vidal Lincoln Quotes

The worst thing to happen to Lincoln - aside from the unfortunate incident at Ford's theatre - was to fall into the hands of Carl Sandburg.

As Seward did not understand the reference, he did not ask for an explanation. In any case, he had a constitutional dislike of being told things that he did not know, as opposed to ferreting them out.

Seward appreciated the honest and open way that Stanton lied; it was the hallmark of the truly great lawyer, and demonstrated a professional mastery not unlike his own.

It is my task always to know, particularly when I don’t.

In politics, as in love, opposites attract, and the misunderstandings that ensue tend to be as bitter and, as in love, as equally terminal.

He was, as soldier and man, all of a piece,

I realize,” said Sumner, “that the press is hardly reliable.” Lincoln turned from the window; suddenly, he grinned. “Oh, yes, they are. They lie. And then they re-lie. So they are nothing if not re-lie-able.

Poets were intended to live to the full the life of the senses.

gave Mr. Davis belladonna to stop the pain—

And all because of those crazy preachers in the North who want to free our darkies, who

Mrs. Grant was the wife of a hero—a butcher-hero, of course, but still a hero to the stupid public.

people in the South who can do the work that the slaves did?” “All the more reason,” said Lincoln, reasonably, “to reimburse the slave-owners.

with Lincoln and speak openly of the dangers of a presidency that

I think, sir, that a war, in the name of the Monroe Doctrine, will unite them to us.

Seward wondered what precedents there were for the disposal of a mad president. Like so many other interesting matters, the Constitution had left the question unduly vague.

Actually, the law can be approached as if it were a kind of garden,” said Seward. “You must recall where and when you plant each seed …

No one ever likes any president’s appointments, including those appointed.

You know what Mr. Bates called me?” Seward shook his head with wonder. “An unprincipled liar. And here I am one of the most heavily principled men in politics.” Lincoln chuckled. In every way, making allowances for regional differences, Seward’s humor was not unlike his own. “And since you’re a smart man, Governor, you never actually lie. Smart men never have to.

helped the boy-governor eat the remains of the fruit, they discussed how it was that newspapers sometimes knew all sorts of secrets that they ought not to have known—and certainly ought not to publish, when the rest of the time they had no interest in facts at all. “Whatever sounds as if it might suit the prejudices of the reader, that is what will be published,” said Chase.

claims to abominate slavery and to regard secession as treason.” “He will fight very well, sir,” said General Scott, gloomily. “It is a matter of honor.” “I see,” said Lincoln, who plainly did not,

Now you may not know this”—Lincoln shut his eyes—“but when I first ran for the Illinois legislature, I came out, more or less, for female suffrage; not exactly the most popular position to take back then, and in that part of the world.” “It is still not the most popular issue anywhere in the world, thank God.” “Well, Mrs. Frémont comes to see me late at night—right off the cars from the West—and threatens me to my face with an uprising against the government, led by the Frémonts and their radical friends. So I called her, in the nicest way, I thought, ‘Quite a lady politician,’ and she was madder than a wet hen and went and told everyone that I’d threatened her!” Lincoln sighed. “Is it possible that female suffrage may not be the answer to every human problem?

Scott paused. Lincoln slowly straightened up. “Well, I guess we’d better persuade Virginia and Maryland to stay in the Union a while longer.” Seward gave an audible sigh of relief. This was the Lincoln that he had been inventing for himself ever since the election: the cautious vacillator—a Western Jesuit, in fact.

Lincoln motioned for Hay to join him in the President’s office. It was Hay’s self-appointed task to keep Lincoln moving when he tarried too long with visitors. Hay could never understand Lincoln’s endless patience with even the most audacious of bores or boors. “They get so little, most of them,” Lincoln would say, as if in explanation of the time wasted.

Seward felt an involuntary shudder in his limbs. He was also ravished by the irony of the moment. For nearly three years, a thousand voices, including his own, had called for a Cromwell, a dictator, a despot; and in all that time, no one had suspected that there had been, from the beginning, a single-minded dictator in the White House, a Lord Protector of the Union by whose will alone the war had been prosecuted. For the first time, Seward understood the nature of Lincoln's political genius. He had been able to make himself absolute dictator without ever letting anyone suspect that he was anything more than a joking, timid backwoods lawyer, given to fits of humility in the presence of all the strutting military and political peacocks that flocked about him.

man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent and those who serve our cause as soldiers.” John Wilkes Booth and Lewis Payne were standing beneath a street lamp at the edge of the Presidential Park. “My God! He will let the niggers vote!” Booth was horrified. Then he whispered in Payne’s ear. “Shoot him now.” Payne shook his head. “Not now, Captain. It’s too risky. And he’s too far away. Later …

Particularly in the military. According to General Scott, our best army officer is a Virginian named Lee.” “The man who caught John Brown?” “The same. Old Mr. Blair is a great friend of his. On Thursday, when Mr. Blair offered Colonel Lee the command of our army, Lee said that although he believes secession is wrong, and slavery worse, he can be no party to an invasion of his native state. I don’t understand Southerners, do you, Mr. Cooke?” “I can’t say I ever tried.

I believe that I can raise four hundred million dollars to recompense the slave-owners. I have considerable unofficial support for this, from persons whose names would astonish you.” “If this were to happen,” said Hunter, “if the slaves were all paid for and set free, how would they live? They have always been accustomed to an overseer. They are used to working only under compulsion. Now you take away this direction, and no work at all would be done. Nothing would be cultivated, and both blacks and whites would starve.

You still want to do that?” Washburne was amazed. Since the rebels had held on to the very end, he saw no reason to do anything at all for them. “Yes. I think it only just. It will also be a quick way of getting money into the South for reconstruction.” Lincoln sighed. “Then we’ll need money to colonize as many Negroes as we can in Central America.” Washburne shook his head with wonder. “When you get hold of an idea you don’t ever let it go, do you?” “Not until I find a better one. Can you imagine what life in the South will be like if the Negroes stay?

We disagree, perhaps, about the urgent need to abolish slavery,” said Chase mildly. “You would go to war for that?” “If it was necessary, yes.” “Wouldn’t you rather go to war against Spain, and acquire Cuba? Against the French, and acquire Mexico?” “I would rather acquire Charleston.” “But we would have outflanked the cotton states.” Seward was persuasive; and elaborate. Chase listened, carefully. The concept was ingenious. The famed two birds that it was always his dream with one stone to kill might, at last, be snared. “Let us say,” said Chase, when Seward had finished with his design for empire, “that I am open to the idea in general. But in particular

Vidal could not not work hard (“I find that when I do not write, I do not think”). He agreed to do a teleplay for NBC about Abraham Lincoln, which soon grew into the novel that would be his magnum opus and most successful book. Work was fueled by coffee (“This stuff has killed more writers than liquor”) and a desire to stave off the melancholy of middle age. So he kept busy (“The mind that doesn’t nourish itself devours itself”). By

Well, today we’re in a peculiar limbo, and since 9/11 things that have never happened to us before have started to happen. Nine/eleven, whoever is behind it—I assume it’s Osama bin Laden and some Muslim fanatics—but whoever’s behind it is not important, as you can tell. We haven’t tried to find him, for one thing. If he were important, we would. So it means our own government doesn’t—doesn’t much care. But 9/11 proved to be a pretext for getting rid of the old republic, which has not been in very good shape for a long, long time, starting with the national security state, which made us a totally militarized society—that’s Harry Truman. And ever since, we just go further and further along the road toward total war for nearly everybody. Now we’re in a strange, strange situation. There is nothing in our history to guide us; we’ve never been in this situation in which one gang basically has seized power. We’ve been very lucky: never—we’ve had dictators before. Lincoln was a dictator, but he was a dictator of the republic. The republic still stood when he was dictator, and we needed him. Franklin Roosevelt was a dictator, and we needed him. And they were—only briefly were they dictators. Now we have a dictatorial system, as best personified by the USA Patriot Act, which just removes us of our Bill of Rights. This is the most serious thing that has happened in the history of the United States, and how we get out of it’s anyone’s guess.