Lincoln (2012)

Gloria Reuben: Elizabeth Keckley

Photos 

Quotes 

• 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.

• 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 : 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?

• Elizabeth Keckley : Did you tell her a dream?