February 27, 1860
Abraham Lincoln launches campaign for Republican presidential nomination with speech at the Cooper Institute in New York
“The Republican Party, on the contrary [to the Democrats], holds that this government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and that slavery is an unqualified evil… . [Republicans] will oppose in all its length and breadth the modern Democratic idea that slavery is as good as freedom.”
Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States