Top 40 Harold Holzer Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell. Wilbur Storey.”

— Harold Holzer

2. “As the endlessly patient husband explained of his volatile wife’s outbursts some years later: “If you knew how little harm it does me, and how much good it does her, you wouldn’t wonder that I am meek.”

— Harold Holzer

3. “The letter is too belligerent. If I were you, I would state the facts as they were, without the pepper and salt. Abraham Lincoln.”

— Harold Holzer

4. “Historian David M. Potter pointed out in 1942 that as president-elect, Lincoln was no more than “simply a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois – a man of great undeveloped capacities and narrowly limited background. He was more fit to become President than to be President.”

— Harold Holzer

5. “Saying nothing was preferable to saying too much. Well versed in the Bible, Lincoln may also have remembered the lines from Isaiah: “You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled.”102.”

— Harold Holzer

6. “By mid-November, his protests notwithstanding, whiskers began sprouting from his face. A few weeks later, his assistant private secretary, John Hay, approvingly punned: Election news Abe’s hirsute fancy warrant – Apparent hair becomes heir apparent.44.”

— Harold Holzer

7. “It came as no surprise that another visitor to Springfield found Lincoln on November 14 “reading up anew” on the history of Andrew Jackson’s response to the 1832 Nullification Crisis. While he made no effort to conceal “the uneasiness which the contemplated treason gives him,” Lincoln assured his guest that, like Jackson, he would not “yield an inch.”

— Harold Holzer

8. “To Lincoln, words always mattered most. Newspaper stories lived but a single day, caricatures flamed into view and just as quickly faded, and even the most flattering photographs inevitably receded behind the thick covers of family albums. But words lived forever. Writing, Lincoln believed, was “the great invention of the world.”

— Harold Holzer

9. “Irritably, Piatt replied that “in ninety days the land would be whitened by tents.” But Lincoln would not take the bait. He merely replied: “Well, we won’t jump that ditch until we come to it,” pausing before he added: “I must run the machine as I find it.” Piatt left dinner wondering why the “strange and strangely gifted” Lincoln remained “so blind.”

— Harold Holzer

10. “The revelers in the State House, however, had no intention of retiring for the night. Instead they emptied into the streets and massed outside the telegraph office, shouting “New York 50,000 majority for Lincoln – whoop, whoop hurrah!” The entire city “went off like one immense cannon report, with shouting from houses, shouting from stores, shouting from house tops, and shouting everywhere.”

— Harold Holzer

11. “So great was the quest for patronage that Lincoln came to hope that Southerners would never leave the Union and abandon the plum government jobs they might retain if they remained loyal. As he joked rather cynically to the Ohio editor and politician Donn Piatt over a chicken dinner at the Lincoln home: “Were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians.”

— Harold Holzer

12. “Superficial and emotional subject might sway undecided voters.”

— Harold Holzer

13. “Samuel FB Morse’s SECOND question over the telegraph was, “Have you any news?”

— Harold Holzer

14. “Fighting newspaper editors for the last word was a losing proposition.”

— Harold Holzer

15. “Any journalist who holds the office writes in a straitjacket.”

— Harold Holzer

16. “Not only was he sorrowful at the prospect of leaving home, he was convinced, he whispered, that he would never return alive. Herndon implored him to abandon such thoughts.”

— Harold Holzer

17. “Soon thereafter, Lincoln glimpsed another “mysterious” and, he feared, “ominous” vision in his own bedroom mirror. While reclining on a lounge, he glanced up to notice a “double-image of himself in the looking-glass,” one clear, the other pallid. For a moment, it was vivid; then it vanished – at first, two Lincolns side by side, then none at all.”

— Harold Holzer

18. “Henry Villard took sarcastic note of the sudden “adornment of whiskers” on November 19. “His old friends, who have been used to a great indifference as to the ‘outer man,’ on his part,” the journalist punned, “say that ‘Abe is putting on airs.”

— Harold Holzer

19. “Indeed, in 1794, George Washington had not only authorized sending national troops into battle against Pennsylvanians resisting the whiskey tax, he had taken to the field to lead the forces himself. Later, Andrew Jackson had acted boldly to crush South Carolina’s attempt to nullify the 1832 tariff.”

— Harold Holzer

20. “His secretary heard Lincoln authoritatively remind a caller on November 15 that “this government possesses both the authority and the power to maintain its own integrity.” Here was Jacksonian firmness to spare. “That, however, is not the ugly point of this matter,” Lincoln added grimly. “The ugly point is the necessity of keeping the government by force, as ours ought to be a government of fraternity.”

— Harold Holzer

21. “Newspaper accounts must not only be studied, but, occasionally refuted.”

— Harold Holzer

22. “Harvard students rallied on campus to offer formal, but “cordial,” congratulations to their fellow student, Robert T. Lincoln, son of the president-elect and newly dubbed – in honor of the Prince of Wales’s recent triumphant American tour – the “Prince of Rails.”

— Harold Holzer

23. “Only a writer “with Bennett’s craft and brass could manage to praise and insult his readers at the same time.”

— Harold Holzer

24. “No greater mistake can be made than to assume that newspapers are correct indices of public opinion.”

— Harold Holzer

25. “Not everyone was laughing. Ascribing “incapacity, stupidity, imbecility, gross ignorance and habitual venality” to the stalemated Congress, the New York Herald angrily concluded that “no remedy whatever is to be looked for from their representatives.” Sounding eerily like President Buchanan in his December annual message, it blamed not Southern extremism but “republican fanaticism” for the current “avalanche of destruction.”

— Harold Holzer

26. “New York Times founder Henry Raymond started his newspaper, “with the goal of reforming government, not belittling it.”

— Harold Holzer

27. “One paper boasted that its subscription and advertising numbers proved that America did not need the social change it rival paper advocated.”

— Harold Holzer

28. “But no opposition grumbling could spoil the moment for the new president-elect. He donned his overcoat, thanked the telegraph operators for their hard work and hospitality, and stuffed the final dispatch from New York into his pocket as a souvenir. It was about time, he announced to one and all, that he “went home and told the news to a tired woman who was sitting up for him.”

— Harold Holzer

29. “Around the same time, the president-elect opened an equally chilling letter from yet another anonymous enemy in Washington: “Caesar had his Brutus. Charles the First his Cromwell. And the President may profit by their example.” The letter was signed “Vindex” – the name of the first Roman governor to rebel against Nero – “one of a sworn band of 10, who have resolved to shoot you in the inaugural procession on the 4th of March, 1861.”

— Harold Holzer

30. “He not only fumbled badly in his attempts at impromptu oratory en route to the capital, but worst of all, ended his journey in the dead of night, embarrassingly fearful for his safety, after encouraging unseemly partisan demonstrations in friendly Northern cities. He was too conspicuous. He was too sequestered. He was too careless. He was too calculating. He was too conciliatory. He was too coercive. He was too sloppy.”

— Harold Holzer

31. “Lincoln likely concluded – was, as Jackson had put it, “fallacious” in its justifications and, “in direct violation of their duty as citizens of the United States, contrary to the laws of their country, subversive of its Constitution, and having for its object the destruction of the Union.” As Jackson had bluntly concluded: “Disunion by armed force is treason.”

— Harold Holzer

32. “While attending to the customary tasks of assembling a cabinet, rewarding political loyalists with federal appointments, and drafting an inaugural address alone – he employed no speechwriters – Lincoln was uniquely forced to confront the collapse of the country itself, with no power to prevent its disintegration. Bound to loyalty to the Republican party platform on which he had run and won, he could yield little to the majority that had in fact voted against him.”

— Harold Holzer

33. “Then it was on toward Manhattan, with the train slowing down at intervening suburban stops like Dobbs Ferry and Manhattanville so Lincoln could offer his ritualistic bowing from the rear car – doing so even alongside Sing Sing, whose prisoners, wearing striped uniforms, saluted as the train passed by.113.”

— Harold Holzer

34. “Lincoln’s “campaign” for president ended how and where it began: in adamant silence, and in the same Illinois city to which he had so tenaciously clung since the national convention. Like the solar eclipse that had obscured the Illinois sun in July, Lincoln remained in Springfield, hidden in full view.”

— Harold Holzer

35. “James M. McPherson spoke for a later generation of scholars when he asserted in 1988 that Lincoln’s entire, public inaugural journey might have been a “mistake,” because in his effort to avoid “a careless remark or slip of the tongue” that might “inflame the crisis further,” the president-elect “indulged in platitudes and trivia,” producing “an unfavorable impression on those who were already disposed to regard the ungainly president-elect as a commonplace prairie lawyer.”

— Harold Holzer

36. “After he “urged his way” to the voting table, Lincoln followed ritual by formally identifying himself in a subdued tone: “Abraham Lincoln.”91 Then he “deposited the straight Republican ticket” after first cutting his own name, and those of the electors pledged to him, from the top of his preprinted ballot so he could vote for other Republicans without immodestly voting for himself.”

— Harold Holzer

37. “On the subject of “personal beauty,” for example, Lincoln merrily confided he felt fortunate that “‘the women couldn’t vote,’ otherwise the monstrous portraits of him which had been circulated during the canvas by friends as well as by foes would surely defeat him.”

— Harold Holzer

38. “Southern newspapers hungry for fodder to roil the secession debate fed their subscribers the most inciteful material they could unearth in the Northern press. Northern journals scoured Southern papers for similarly provocative reports designed to confirm hotheaded Southern disloyalty.”

— Harold Holzer

39. “Whether applauded or not, the New York Tribune maintained that Lincoln’s bearing remained “deliberate and impressive” at this solemn moment, though Henri Mercier, the elegant French minister, caustically likened this plain American’s appearance amid the “marble and gilt” of the Capital to inaugurating “a Quaker in a Basilica.”

— Harold Holzer

40. “When a grizzled yeoman worker appeared one morning to complain that as a state legislator many years earlier, in hard times, young Lincoln had inexcusably voted to raise his government salary from two to all of four dollars a day,” Lincoln listened to the reproach calmly. “Now, Abe, I want to know what in the world made you do it?” demanded the old Democrat. With deadpan seriousness, Lincoln explained: “I reckon the only reason was that we wanted the money.”

— Harold Holzer

41. “Almost from the moment votes are counted, lame-duck chief executives invariably recede into superfluity, but Lincoln’s hapless predecessor, James Buchanan, made procrastination into an art form. He could not have excused himself from responsibility at a more portentous moment, or left his successor with graver problems to address once he was constitutionally entitled to do so.”

— Harold Holzer

42. “Lincoln may have shown how relieved he was that there had been none of the “outrage and violence” some had predicted in New York when a giant of a man neared him, and someone in the crowd cried out, “That’s Tom Hyer,” the retired prizefighter who had won fame with a 101-round victory years before. To which the president-elect replied, to much laughter: “I don’t care, so long as he don’t hit me.”

— Harold Holzer

43. “THE APPROACH OF Thanksgiving on November 29 sent Springfield into a panic – not over the nation-imperiling crisis plaguing its leading citizen, but the apparently more dismaying prospect of a local turkey shortage.”

— Harold Holzer

44. “As of Election Day, Lincoln had successfully avoided not only his three opponents, but also his own running mate, Hannibal Hamlin. Republicans had nominated the Maine senator for vice president without Lincoln’s knowledge, much less his consent – true to another prevailing political custom that left such choices exclusively to the delegates – in an attempt to balance the Chicago convention’s choice of a Westerner for the presidency.”

— Harold Holzer