Abraham Lincoln
“The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.”


Paul M. Angle
"At forty-five he had been inactive in politics for several years.

But in the year in which he attained that age—1854—the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed. The effect of the bill was to open federal territories, not yet organized as states, to slavery.

Lincoln, aroused as never before, re-entered politics and did all that was within his power to repeal the new legislation.

Out of the opposition of thousands like him the Republican Party came into existence. Within two years he was its acknowledged leader in Illinois."

https://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/OCA/Books2012-06/abrahamlincolnsspee00linc/abrahamlincolnsspee00linc.pdf