Abraham Lincoln -
“I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.”

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