Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln led the United States through the Civil War and issued the Emancipation Proclamation before his assassination in April 1865. In the 1850s he repeatedly framed the anti-slavery struggle as one to be won by votes rather than violence — a theme captured in his surviving fragment urging “peaceful ballots only.” That documented sentiment is why the crisper “ballot is stronger than the bullet” formulation reads as authentically his, even though the exact phrasing comes from a later, contested reconstruction.