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Wilberforce, Lincoln, and the Abolition of Slavery

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Abraham Lincoln, Speech fragment concerning the abolition of slavery, c. July 1858. The Gilder Lehrman Collection.

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Just six years after Frederick Douglass invoked the memory of Wilberforce, Lincoln also reminded Americans of the successful abolition movement in England: "School-boys know that Wilbe[r]force. . .helped the [abolitionist] cause forward; but who can now name a single man who labored to retard it?"

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