The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe. Corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. The money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed.

Abraham Lincoln (more by this author)

1809-1865 (Age at death: 56 approx.)

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809Â - April 15, 1865) served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union, ending slavery, and rededicating the nation to nationalism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, he was mostly self-educated and became a country lawyer, an Illinois state legislator, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives, but failed in two attempts at a seat in the United States Senate. He was an affectionate, though often absent, husband, and father of four children.As an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery in the United States, Lincoln won the first Republican nomination and was elected president in 1860. As president he concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war effort, always seeking to reunify the nation after the secession of the eleven Confederate States of America. He vigorously exercised unprecedented war powers, including the arrest and detention, without trial, of thousands of suspected secessionists. He issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and promoted the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery. Six days after the surrender of the main Confederate forces, Lincoln was assassinated, the first President to suffer such a fate.

Author Information from Wikipedia

Country: United States

Type: Prose
Context: Speech
Context Details: To pay for the 'civil war, on the 5th of August 1861, Congress passes the first National income tax and by the 21st of that month the first paper currency was issued. Lincoln said, "The money powers prey ..
Source: Federal Reserve Bank (Inc.) A Murderous
Uttered: 8
Cited By: libertyforlifedotcom