Lincoln (2012)

Daniel Day-Lewis: Abraham Lincoln

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• Abraham Lincoln : It was right after the revolution, right after peace had been concluded. And Ethan Allen went to London to help our new country conduct its business with the king. The English sneered at how rough we are and rude and simple-minded and on like that, everywhere he went. 'Til one day he was invited to the townhouse of a great English lord. Dinner was served, beverages imbibed, time passed as happens and Mr. Allen found he needed the privy. He was grateful to be directed to this. Relieved, you might say. Mr. Allen discovered on entering the water closet that the only decoration therein was a portrait of George Washington. Ethan Allen done what he came to do and returned to the drawing room. His host and the others were disappointed when he didn't mention Washington's portrait. And finally his lordship couldn't resist and asked Mr. Allen had he noticed it, the picture of Washington. He said he had. Well, what did he think of its placement? Did it seem appropriately located to Mr. Allen? And Mr. Allen said it did. The host was astounded.

  [British accent] 

  Abraham Lincoln : "Appropriate? George Washington's likeness in a water closet?"

  [normal voice] 

  Abraham Lincoln : "Yes," said Mr. Allen, "where it will do good service. The world knows nothing will make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of George Washington."

  [the whole room laughs] 

  Abraham Lincoln : I love that story.

• Abraham Lincoln : As the preacher said, I could write shorter sermons, but once I start, I get too lazy to stop.

• Abraham Lincoln : Back when I rode the legal circuit in Illinois, I defended a woman from Metmora named Melissa Goings, 77 years-old. They said she murdered her husband, he was 83. He was choking her and she grabbed a-hold of a stick of firewood and fractured his skull and he died. In his will he wrote: 'I suspect she has killed me. If I get over it, I will have revenge.' No one was keen to see her convicted, he was that kind of husband. I asked the prosecuting attorney if I might have a short conference with my client. And she and I went into a room in the courthouse, but I alone emerged. The window in the room was found to be wide open. It was believed the old lady may have climbed out of it. I told the bailiff right before. I left her in the room she asked me where she could get a good drink of water, and I told her Tennessee. Mrs. Goings was seen no more in Metamora. Enough justice had been done; they even forgave the bondsman her bail.

  John Usher : I'm afraid I don't see...

  Abraham Lincoln : I decided that the Constitution gives me war powers, but no one knows just exactly what those powers are. Some say they don't exist. I don't know. I decided I needed them to exist to uphold my oath to protect the Constitution, which I decided meant that I could take the rebel's slaves from them as property confiscated in war. That might recommend to suspicion that I agree with the rebs that their slaves are property in the first place. Of course I don't, never have, I'm glad to see any man free, and if calling a man property, or war contraband, does the trick... Why I caught at the opportunity. Now here's where it gets truly slippery. I use the law allowing for the seizure of property in a war knowing it applies only to the property of governments and citizens of belligerent nations. But the South ain't a nation, that's why I can't negotiate with'em. If in fact the Negroes are property according to law, have I the right to take the rebels' property from 'em, if I insist they're rebels only, and not citizens of a belligerent country? And slipperier still: I maintain it ain't our actual Southern states in rebellion but only the rebels living in those states, the laws of which states remain in force. The laws of which states remain in force. That means, that since it's states' laws that determine whether Negroes can be sold as slaves, as property - the Federal government doesn't have a say in that, least not yet then Negroes in those states are slaves, hence property, hence my war powers allow me to confiscate'em as such. So I confiscated 'em. But if I'm a respecter of states' laws, how then can I legally free'em with my Proclamation, as I done, unless I'm cancelling states' laws? I felt the war demanded it; my oath demanded it; I felt right with myself; and I hoped it was legal to do it, I'm hoping still. Two years ago I proclaimed these people emancipated - "then, hence forward and forever free."But let's say the courts decide I had no authority to do it. They might well decide that. Say there's no amendment abolishing slavery. Say it's after the war, and I can no longer use my war powers to just ignore the courts' decisions, like I sometimes felt I had to do. Might those people I freed be ordered back into slavery? That's why I'd like to get the Thirteenth Amendment through the House, and on its way to ratification by the states, wrap the whole slavery thing up, forever and aye. As soon as I'm able. Now. End of this month. And I'd like you to stand behind me. Like my cabinet's most always done.

• Abraham Lincoln : [pounds his hand on a table as his cabinet squabbles]  I can't listen to this anymore. I can't accomplish a goddamn thing of any worth until we cure ourselves of slavery and end this pestilential war! I wonder if any of you or anyone else knows it. I know! I need this! This amendment is that cure! We've stepped out upon the world stage now. Now! With the fate of human dignity in our hands. Blood's been spilled to afford us this moment now! Now! Now! And you grouse so and heckle and dodge about like pettifogging Tammany Hall hucksters!

• Abraham Lincoln : Euclid's first common notion is this: Things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other. That's a rule of mathematical reasoning and its true because it works - has done and always will do. In his book Euclid says this is self evident. You see there it is even in that 2,000 year old book of mechanical law it is the self evident truth that things which are equal to the same things are equal to each other.

• Thaddeus Stevens : The people elected me to represent them, to lead them, and I lead. You ought to try it.

  Abraham Lincoln : I admire your zeal, Mr. Stevens, and I have tried to profit from the example of it. But if I'd listened to you, I'd have declared every slave free the minute the first shell struck Fort Sumter. Then the border states would've gone over to the Confederacy, the war would've been lost and the Union along with it, and instead of abolishing slavery, as we hope to do in two weeks, we'd be watching helpless as infants as it spread from the American South into South America.

  Thaddeus Stevens : Oh, how you have longed to say that to me. You claim you trust them, but you know what the people are. You know that the inner compass that should direct the soul toward justice has ossified in white men and women, North and South, unto utter uselessness through tolerating the evil of slavery. White people cannot bear the thought of sharing this country's infinite abundance with Negroes.

  Abraham Lincoln : A compass, I learned when I was surveying, it'll... it'll point you true north from where you're standing, but it's got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you'll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp... what's the use of knowing true north?

• Abraham Lincoln : Do you think we choose to be born?

  Samuel Beckwith : I don't suppose so.

  Abraham Lincoln : Are we fitted to the times we're born into?

  Samuel Beckwith : Well, I don't know about myself. You may be, sir. Fitted.

• Abraham Lincoln : I must make my decision, Bob must make his, you yours. And bear what we must. Hold and carry what we must. What I carry within me, you must allow me to do it. Alone, as I must. And you alone, Mary, you alone may lighten the burden. Or render it intolerable. As you choose.

• Abraham Lincoln : See what is before you. See the here and now, that's the hardest thing, the only thing that accounts. Abolishing slavery by constitutional provisions settles the fate for all coming time. Not only of the millions now in bondage, but of unborn millions to come. Two votes stand in its way. These votes must be procured.

  William Seward : We need two yeses. Three abstentions. Four yeses and one more abstention and the amendment will pass.

  Abraham Lincoln : You've got a night and a day and a night; several perfectly good hours! Now get the hell out of here and get them!

  James Ashley : Yes. But how?

  Abraham Lincoln : Buzzard's guts, man! I am the President of the United States of America! Clothed in immense power! You will procure me these votes.

• [Lincoln's late-night cabinet meeting is interrupted by a call to drive with Mary to Ford's Theater] 

  Abraham Lincoln : I suppose it's time to go. Though I would rather stay.

• Abraham Lincoln : [quoting a line spoken by Banquo in Shakespeare's "Macbeth"]  If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me.

• [last lines, from Second Inaugural speech] 

  Abraham Lincoln : Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

• Corporal Ira Clark : Now that white people have accustomed themselves to seeing negro men with guns fighting on their behalf, and even getting the same pay, in a few years perhaps they can abide the idea of negro lieutenants and captains. In fifty years, maybe a negro colonel. In a hundred years, the vote.

  Abraham Lincoln : What will you do after the war, Corporal Clark?

  Corporal Ira Clark : Work sir. Perhaps you'll hire me.

  Abraham Lincoln : Perhaps I will.

  Corporal Ira Clark : But you should know, sir, that I get sick at the smell of bootblack, and I cannot cut hair.

  Abraham Lincoln : [grins]  I've yet to find a man could make a difference with mine.

  Private Harold Green : You got springy hair for a white man.

  Abraham Lincoln : I do. My last barber hanged himself. And the one before that. Left me his scissors in his will.

• Abraham Lincoln : I never seen the like of it before, what I seen today. Never seen the like of it before.

  Ulysses S. Grant : You always knew that. What this was going to be. Intimate and ugly. You must have needed to see it close when you decided to come down here.

  Abraham Lincoln : We've made it possible for one another to do terrible things.

  Ulysses S. Grant : We've won the war. Now you have to lead us out of it.

• Ulysses S. Grant : By outward appearance, you're 10 years older than you were a year ago.

  Abraham Lincoln : Some weariness has bit at my bones.

• William Seward : Gentleman, you have a visitor.

  W.N. Bilbo : [checking Latham's cards]  Goddamn!

  W.N. Bilbo : [President Lincoln walks in]  Well, 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's, "Henry IV, Part 2"]  '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 : [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] 

• 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.

• Abraham Lincoln : [on General Grant]  My trust in him is marrow deep.

• 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 ought to have done it, I ought have done for Tad's sake! For everybody goddamned sake! I should've clapped you in the madhouse!

  Mary Todd Lincoln : Then do it! Do it! Don't you threaten me,you do it this time! Lock me away! You'll have to, I swear if Robert is killed!

• Abraham Lincoln : I couldn't tolerate you grieving so for Willie because I couldn't permit it in myself, though I wanted to, Mary. I wanted to crawl under the earth, into the vault with his coffin. I still do. Every day I do. Don't... talk to me about grief. I must make my decisions, Bob must make his, you yours. And bear what we must, hold and carry what we must. What I carry within me - you must allow me to do it, alone as I must. And you alone, Mary, you alone may lighten this burden, or render it intolerable. As you choose.

• Mary Todd Lincoln : All anyone will remember of me is I was crazy and I ruined your happiness.

  Abraham Lincoln : Anyone who thinks that doesn't understand, Molly.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : When they look at you, at what it cost to live at the heart of this, they'll wonder at it. They'll wonder at you. They should. But they should also look at the wretched woman by your side, if they want to understand what this was truly like, for an ordinary person, for anyone other than you.

  Abraham Lincoln : You must try to be happier. We must, both of us. We've been so miserable for so long.

• 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.

  Abraham Lincoln : [looks away, quietly to himself]  I can't lose you.

• Abraham Lincoln : It's nighttime. Ship's move by some terrible power at terrific speed. And though it's imperceptible in the darkness, I have an intuition that we're headed towards a shore. No one else seems to be aboard the vessel. I'm very keenly aware of my aloneness.

  Abraham Lincoln : [quoting Hamlet]  "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

  Abraham Lincoln : Hmm. I reckon it's the speed that's strange to me. I'm used to going at a deliberate pace. I should space you, Molly. I shouldn't tell you my dreams.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : I don't want to be spared if you aren't And you spare me nothing.

• Abraham Lincoln : If we submit ourselves to law, even submit to losing freedoms, the freedom to oppress, for instance, we may discover other freedoms previously unknown to us. Had you kept faith with democratic process, as frustrating as that can be...

  Judge John A. Campbell : Come sir, spare us these pieties. Did you defeat us with ballots?

  Alexander Stephens : How have you held your Union together? Through democracy? How many hundreds of thousands have died during your administration? Your union, sir, is bonded in cannon fire and death.

  Abraham Lincoln : It may be you're right. But say all we 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? At all rates, whatever must be proven by blood and sacrifice must have been proved by now. Shall we stop this bleeding?

• William Hutton : I can't make sense of it, what he died for. Mr. Lincoln, I hate them all, I do, all black people. I am a prejudiced man.

  Abraham Lincoln : I'd change that in you if I could, but that's not why I come. I might be wrong, Mr. Hutton, but I expect - colored people will most likely be free, and when that's so, it's simple truth that your brother's bravery, and his death, helped make it so. Only you can decide whether that's sense enough for you, or not. My deepest sympathies to your family.

• Abraham Lincoln : Seward doesn't want me leaving big muddy footprints all over town.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : No one has ever lived who knows better than you the proper placement of footfalls on treacherous paths.

• Tad Lincoln : Papa? Papa, I want to see Willie.

  Abraham Lincoln : Me too, Tad. But we can't. Willie's gone. Three years now, he's gone.

• Elizabeth Keckley : I know the vote is only four days away. I know you're concerned. Thank you for your concern over this. And I want you to know, they'll approve it. God will see to it.

  Abraham Lincoln : I don't envy him his task. He may wish He'd chosen an instrument for His purpose more wieldy than the House of Representatives.

• Abraham Lincoln : Liberality all around. No punishment, I don't want that. And the leaders - Jeff and the rest of 'em - if they escape, leave the country while my back's turned, that wouldn't upset me none. When peace comes it mustn't just be hangings.

• John Usher : It seems to me, sir, you're describing precisely the sort of dictator the Democrats have been howling about.

  James Speed : Dictators aren't susceptible to law.

  John Usher : Neither is he! He just said as much! Ignoring the courts? Twisting meanings? What reins him in from, from...

  Abraham Lincoln : Well, the people do that, I suppose. I signed the Emancipation Proclamation a year and half before my second election. I felt I was within my power to do it; however I also felt that I might be wrong about that; I knew the people would tell me. I gave 'em a year and half to think about it. And they re-elected me.

  [pauses] 

  Abraham Lincoln : And come February the first, I intend to sign the Thirteenth Amendment.

• Tad Lincoln : When you were a slave, Mr. Slade, did they beat you?

  William Slade : I was born a free man. Nobody beat me except I beat them right back.

  [Mrs. Keckley enters] 

  Elizabeth Keckley : Mr. Lincoln, could you come with me, please...?

  William Slade : Mrs. Keckley was a slave. Ask her if she was beaten.

  Tad Lincoln : Were you...?

  Abraham Lincoln : [shakes his head]  Tad...

  Elizabeth Keckley : I was beaten with a fire shovel when I was younger than you.

• Abraham Lincoln : Thunder forth, God of War!

• Abraham Lincoln : Old Neptune!

  [paraphrasing Shakespeare's "Macbeth"] 

  Abraham Lincoln : Shake thy hoary locks!

• William Seward : In my opinion...

  Abraham Lincoln : To which I always listen...

  William Seward : Or pretend to.

  Abraham Lincoln : With all three of my ears.

• George Yeaman : I can't vote for the amendment, Mr. Lincoln.

  Abraham Lincoln : I saw a barge once, Mr. Yeaman, filled with colored men in chains heading down the Mississippi to the New Orleans slave markets. It sickened me. And more than that, it brought a shadow down. A pall around my eyes. Slavery troubled me, as long as I can remember, in a way it never troubled my father, though he hated it. In his own fashion. He knew no smallholding dirt farmer could compete with slave plantations, he took us out from Kentucky to get away from 'em. He wanted Indiana kept free. He wasn't a kind man, but there was a rough moral urge for fairness, for freedom in him. I learnt that from him, I suppose, if little else from him. We didn't care for one another, Mr. Yeaman.

  George Yeaman : [nods his head]  I... Well, I'm sorry to hear that.

  Abraham Lincoln : Loving kindness, that most ordinary thing, came to me from other sources. I'm grateful for that.

  George Yeaman : Well, I hate it, too, sir. Slavery, but... but we're entirely unready for emancipation. There's too many questions...

  Abraham Lincoln : We're unready for peace too, ain't we?

  [both chuckle] 

  Abraham Lincoln : When it comes, it'll present us with conundrums and dangers greater than any we've faced during the war, bloody as it's been. We'll have to extemporize and experiment

  [rises from sitting on the desk] 

  Abraham Lincoln : with what it is when it is.

  [takes the seat beside Yeaman, no longer towering over Yeaman, leans forward and looks Yeaman in the eye] 

  Abraham Lincoln : I read your speech, George. Negroes and the vote, that's a puzzle.

  George Yeaman : No, no. But, but, but Negroes can't, um, vote, Mr. Lincoln. You're not suggesting that we enfranchise colored people.

  Abraham Lincoln : I'm asking only that you disenthrall yourself from the slave powers. I'll let you know when there's an offer on my desk for surrender. There's none before us now. What's before us now, that's the vote on the Thirteenth Amendment. It's going to be so very close. You see what you can do.

  [exits leaving Yeaman, considering] 

• Abraham Lincoln : Don't spend too much money on the flub dubs.

• Abraham Lincoln : Are you afraid of what lies ahead for your people if we succeed?

  Elizabeth Keckley : White people don't want us here.

  Abraham Lincoln : Many don't.

  Elizabeth Keckley : What about you?

  Abraham Lincoln : Hmm. I don't know you, Mrs. Keckley. Any of you. You're familiar to me, as all people are... unaccommodated, poor, bare, forked creatures such as we all are. You have a right to expect what I expect, and likely our expectations are not incomprehensible to each other. I assume I'll get used to you. Now what you are to the nation, what'll become of you once slavery's day is done, I don't know.

  Elizabeth Keckley : What my people are to be, I can't say. Negroes have been fighting and dying for freedom since the first of us was a slave. I never heard any ask what freedom will bring. Freedom's first. As for me, my son died, fighting for the Union, wearing the Union blue. For freedom he died. I'm his mother. That's what I am to the nation, Mr. Lincoln. What else must I be?

• Abraham Lincoln : Well, Mr Representative Ashley. Tell us the news from the Hill.

  James Ashley : Ah, well, the news...

  Abraham Lincoln : Why, for instance, is this thus, and what is the reason for this thusness?

• Abraham Lincoln : Slavery, sir, it's done.

• Abraham Lincoln : Come on out, you old rat! That's what - that's what Ethan Allen called out to the commander of Fort Ticonderoga in 1776. Come on out, you old rat! Of course, there were only 40 odd Redcoats at Ticonderoga. But there is one Ethan Allen story...

  Edwin Stanton : No!

  Abraham Lincoln : That I'm very partial to.

  Edwin Stanton : No, you're, you're going to tell a story! I don't believe - that I can bear - to listen to another one of your stories right now!

  [storms out, shouting down the corridor as he goes, voice trailing off] 

  Edwin Stanton : I need the B&O sideyard schedules for Alexandria! I asked for them this morning!

• Abraham Lincoln : What a joy to be comprehended.

• Robert Lincoln : I might not even want to be a lawyer.

  Abraham Lincoln : It's a sturdy profession. And a useful one.

  Robert Lincoln : Yes, and I want to be useful, but *now*, not afterwards.

  Abraham Lincoln : [Slade hands Lincoln his formal gloves]  I ain't wearing them things, Mr. Slade, they never fit right.

  William Slade : The missus will have you wear 'em. Don't think about leaving 'em.

  Robert Lincoln : You're delaying, that's your favorite tactic.

  William Slade : [overlapping dialogue]  Be useful...

  Robert Lincoln : You won't tell me no,

  William Slade : And stop distracting him.

  Robert Lincoln : But the war will be over in a month, and you know it will!

  Abraham Lincoln : I've found that prophesying is one of life's less prophet-able

  [sic] 

  Abraham Lincoln : occupations.

  [Slade chuckles] 

• Abraham Lincoln : Now, here's a sixteen year old boy. They're going to hang him. He was with the 15th Indiana Calvary near Beaufort, seems he lamed his horse to avoid battle. I don't think even Stanton would complain if I pardoned him? You think Stanton would complain?

  John Hay : Ummm... I don't know, sir, I don't know who you're, uh... What time is it?

  Abraham Lincoln : It's three forty in the morning.

  John Nicolay : [not fully conscious]  Don't... let him pardon any more deserters...

  John Hay : Mr. Stanton thinks you pardon too many. He's generally apoplectic...

  Abraham Lincoln : He oughtn't to have done that, crippled his horse. That was cruel, but you don't just hang a sixteen year old boy for that...

  John Hay : Ask the horse what he thinks.

  Abraham Lincoln : For cruelty. There'd be no sixteen year old boys left.

  [protracted pause while staring into oblivion] 

  Abraham Lincoln : Grant wants me to bring the secesh delegates to Washington.

  John Nicolay : [fully awaken, sits upright in bed]  So... there are secesh delegates?

  Abraham Lincoln : He was afraid, that's all it was. I don't care to hang a boy for being frightened, either. What good would it do him?

  [signs the pardon] 

  Abraham Lincoln : War's nearly done. Ain't that so? What use one more corpse? Any more corpses?

  [rises to leaves] 

  John Hay : Do you need company?

  Abraham Lincoln : Times like this, I'm best alone.

  [exits] 

• Mary Todd Lincoln : It was an attempted assassination.

  Abraham Lincoln : It was most probably an accident.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : It was an assassin whose intended target was you.

• Abraham Lincoln : How are the plans coming along for the big shindy?

  Mary Todd Lincoln : I don't want to talk about parties. You don't care about parties.

  Abraham Lincoln : Not much, but they're a necessary hindrance.

• Abraham Lincoln : If the Blairs tell them to, no Republican will baulk at voting for the amendment.

  Montgomery Blair : No conservative Republican is what you mean.

  Preston Blair : All Republicans ought to be conservative. I founded this party, in my own goddamn home, to be a conservative anti-slavery party, not a hobby-horse for goddamn radical abolitionists.

• William Seward : We can't - buy the vote for the amendment. It's too important.

  Abraham Lincoln : I said nothing of buying anything. We need twenty votes was all I said. Start of my second term, plenty of positions to fill.

• Preston Blair : Those Southern men are coming. I beg you, in the name of gentle Christ, sir.

  Abraham Lincoln : I understand.

  Preston Blair : Talk peace with these men.

  Abraham Lincoln : I understand, Preston.

• James Ashley : There aren't nearly enough votes.

  Abraham Lincoln : We're whalers, Mr Ashley.

  James Ashley : Whalers? As in - whales?

  Abraham Lincoln : We've been chasing this whale for a long time. And we finally placed a harpoon in the monster's back. It's in, James. It's in. We finish the deed now. We can't wait. Or with one flop of his tail, he'll smash the boat and send us all to eternity.

  William Seward : On the 31st of this month, of this year, put the amendment up for a vote.

• William Seward : A disaster. This is a disaster.

  Abraham Lincoln : Time is a great thickener of things, Willum.

  William Seward : Yes, I suppose it is. Actually, I have no idea what you mean by that.

• Abraham Lincoln : What hope for any Democratic votes, Willum, if word gets out that I've refused a chance to end the war? You think word won't get out? In Washington?

• Abraham Lincoln : We begin with equality. That's the origin, isn't it? That's balance. That's - that's fairness. That's justice.

• John Nicolay : Making false representation to Congress, is - it's - it's...

  Abraham Lincoln : It's impeachable, but I've made no such false representation.

• Mary Todd Lincoln : You've an itch to travel?

  Abraham Lincoln : I'd like that. To the West, by rail.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : Overseas.

  Abraham Lincoln : The Holy Land.

  Mary Todd Lincoln : Awfully pious for a man who takes his wife out buggy-riding on Good Friday.

  Abraham Lincoln : Jerusalem. Where David and Solomon walked. I dream of walking in that ancient city.

• Thaddeus Stevens : Ashley insists you're ensuring approval by dispensing patronage to otherwise undeserving Democrats.

  Abraham Lincoln : I can't ensure a single damn thing if you scare the whole House silly with talk of land appropriations and revolutionary tribunals.

  Thaddeus Stevens : When the war ends, I intend to push for full equality, the Negro vote, and much more. Congress shall mandate the seizure of every foot of Rebel land and every dollar of their property. We'll use their confiscated wealth to establish hundreds of thousands of free Negro farmers and, at their side, soldiers armed to occupy and transform the heritage of traitors. We'll build up a land down there of free men and free women and free children and freedom. The nation needs to know that we have such plans.

  Abraham Lincoln : That's the untempered version of reconstruction. It is not - it's not quite exactly what I intend. But we shall oppose one another in the course of time. Now we're working together.