1861

Showing 34 works across all media from 1861

Speech · Political speech

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 9.0

Fiction · Coming of age

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens

1861 · 469 pages

Pip, a blacksmith's boy, is handed a fortune by an unknown benefactor and turns snob. Miss Havisham waits in her rotted wedding dress, and Dickens makes the shame of low birth unbearable.

★ 8.8

Nonfiction · Slave narrative

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs

1861 · 176 pages

Seven years in a crawlspace three feet high, watching her children through a peephole. Jacobs named what men's slave narratives left out: the owner who pursued her from her teens.

★ 6.8

Fiction

Silas Marner

George Eliot

1861 · 209 pages

Robbed of gold he hoarded for fifteen years, a lonely weaver finds a golden-haired child on his hearth. Eliot turns a village fable into a full account of how a person is repaired.

★ 6.7

Speech · Political speech

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 5.5

Poem · Magazine

One, if by land, and two, if by sea; And I on the opposite shore will be, Ready to ride and spread the alarm Through every Middlesex village and farm.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Atlantic Monthly · 1861

★ 5.4

A place for everything and everything in its place.

Isabella Mary Beeton

1861

★ 5.4

Political literature

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

Matthew Arnold

Democracy · 1861

★ 5.3

Speech · Political speech

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one.

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 4.6

Speech · Political speech

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 4.6

Poem · Newspaper

Inebriate of Air - am I - And debauchee of dew - Reeling - thro endless summer days - From inns of Molten Blue.

Emily Dickinson

1861

★ 4.5

Novel · Coming of age story

I loved her simply because I found her irresistible.

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 4.0

Novel · Coming of age story

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 4.0

Novel · Coming of age story

I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 3.9

Novel · Coming of age story

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 3.9

Novel · Coming of age story

Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces,—and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper,—love her, love her, love her!

Charles Dickens

Great Expectations · 1861

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual... Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever - it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Abraham Lincoln

First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln · 1861

★ 3.8

Political literature

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.

Abraham Lincoln

Annual Message to Congress · 1861

★ 3.7

Essay · Political literature

The Conservatives…being by the law of their existence the stupidest party.

John Stuart Mill

Considerations on Representative Government · 1861

★ 3.7