Benjamin Walker credited as playing...
Abraham Lincoln
- [from trailer]
- Abraham Lincoln: History prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle, but forgets the blood. Whatever history remembers of me, if it remembers me at all, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth. For whatever else I am - a husband, a lawyer, a president - I shall always think of myself first and foremost as a hunter.
- Abraham Lincoln: Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
- Henry Sturgess: [about the weapons] So, Abe... which one takes your fancy?
- Abraham Lincoln: Actually, I haven't had the best luck with shooting irons.
- [catches sight of an axe on a stump outside]
- Abraham Lincoln: But... I was a rail splitter.
- Abraham Lincoln: [after Henry has saved Abraham and Will from falling train] Thank you, Henry. I suppose... some vampires CAN be trusted.
- Henry Sturgess: As can some men, Abraham.
- [pauses]
- Henry Sturgess: If the train was a decoy, where is the silver?
- Will Johnson: This isn't the only railroad.
- Abraham Lincoln: [Henry nods, Abraham grins knowingly] A wise man once taught me... always have a contingency plan.
- Adam: [after Lincoln's attempt to help the slaves] Bravo, Mr. Lincoln! Bravo. You're even better then I've heard. A shame to sacrafice so many of my best men... but I needed to know if you were up to the task.
- Abraham Lincoln: [being held down by Vadoma] What do you want with me?
- Adam: To see you liberated. To see you rise up and destroy your oppressor.
- Abraham Lincoln: [angrily] That's interesting coming from a slave owner!
- Adam: Men have enslaved each other... since they invented gods to forgive them for doing it.
- Abraham Lincoln: [after she uses his hat to come to eye level] Miss Todd, you are a woman of ravishing resourcefulness.
- Mary Todd Lincoln: Mr. Lincoln, you have no idea.
- [Henry leads Abe to the cellar of his home, to test him on what he has learned]
- Henry Sturgess: Before you protect others from darkness, you must first be able to protect yourself. Your enemies have the power to render themselves invisible. You must have the ability to fight blind. To see without seeing.
- [He shuts the door, plunging the room into darkness. There are the sounds of grunts, blows landing and Abe moaning. The door opens, revealing Abe, coughing and bloody, crawling slowly towards the door as if to leave]
- Abraham Lincoln: Again.
- [He shuts the door]
- Henry Sturgess: I'd like you to chop this tree down, in a single swing.
- Abraham Lincoln: That tree? It's got to be more than a foot across. That's impossible.
- Henry Sturgess: But it isn't a tree. It's what you hate most in the world. So tell me, Mr. Lincoln: what do you hate?
- Abraham Lincoln: I hate Jack Barts.
- Henry Sturgess: [motions to the tree] Then strike him down.
- [Abe swings, chopping into the tree, but fails to cut it down]
- Henry Sturgess: Well, clearly you don't hate him that much. What do you *really* hate?
- Abraham Lincoln: [swings, but again the tree stays upright] I hate that my mother was taken away.
- Henry Sturgess: Inadequate.
- Abraham Lincoln: [swings] I hate that we were afraid.
- Henry Sturgess: And?
- Abraham Lincoln: [swings] That my mother, father, everyone that we knew, lived in fear!
- Henry Sturgess: Pathetic.
- Abraham Lincoln: [swings] I hate that I was too small!
- Henry Sturgess: Weak.
- Abraham Lincoln: Yes!
- Henry Sturgess: And that you failed.
- Abraham Lincoln: Yes!
- Henry Sturgess: To protect her.
- Abraham Lincoln: Yes!
- Henry Sturgess: That you... Let her die.
- [With a roar, Abe swings, chopping straight through the trunk of the tree and toppling it to the ground. Abe looks stunned]
- Henry Sturgess: Power, Lincoln, *real* power, comes not from hate, but from truth.
- Abraham Lincoln: I'm sorry, Mary. I'm sorry I've kept you in the dark all these years... I need you, Mary.
- Mary Todd Lincoln: I've waited a long time to hear you say those words.
- Mary Todd Lincoln: I came to Springfield for some one different. Some whose life was a bit more adventorous, and well... My apologies. I'm never this...
- Abraham Lincoln: Honest?
- Mary Todd Lincoln: Rude.
- Abraham Lincoln: Miss Todd, may I speak candidly? I, too, came here to better myself.
- Abraham Lincoln: Do you really want the truth, Mary?... Each and every night I go out... hunting vampires.
- Mary Todd Lincoln: [after a moment of silence] Well, how do you hunt these vampires?
- Abraham Lincoln: With an axe... a special silver axe, of course.
- Abraham Lincoln: Vampire are just myths.
- Henry Sturgess: Myths don't beat you senseless after you've put a bullet in their brain!
- Will Johnson: [entering the store, with his back to Lincoln] A stock boy reading a law book. What? Studying to be a lawyer?
- Abraham Lincoln: As a matter a fact, I am.
- Will Johnson: Alright, what about a little test? What's the law for free slaves in the north?
- Abraham Lincoln: According to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, Enforcing Article 4, Section 2 of the United States Constitution: "All runaway slaves must be returned to their owners." However, personal liberty laws state that: "Anyone born free cannot be taken under this act."
- Will Johnson: [turning slowly] I heard a good woman once say, "Until we are all free, we're all slaves."
- [first lines]
- Abraham Lincoln: [voice-over in his journal] History prefers legends to men. It prefers nobility to brutality, soaring speeches to quiet deeds. History remembers the battle and forgets the blood. Whatever history remembers of me, if it remembers anything at all, it shall only be a fraction of the truth. For whatever else I am - a husband, a lawyer, a President - I shall always think of myself as a man who struggled against darkness.
- Abraham Lincoln: My mother was murdered.
- Henry Sturgess: And if I teach you how to murder her murderer... so what? How will that honor her memory? How will that benefit the next boy whose mother was taken?
- Mary Todd Lincoln: It's called a dance. If we were meant to sit down, they would've call it something else.
- Abraham Lincoln: [smiling] Yes, I suppose they would have.
- Abraham Lincoln: A great man once said, "What we do, we do not for ourselves, not for one man, but for the good of all mankind."
- Henry Sturgess: [to Lincoln] You know I can restore the dead.
- Mary Todd Lincoln: [entering the room] Do it... do it.
- Abraham Lincoln: Mary...
- Mary Todd Lincoln: Do it...
- [to Lincoln]
- Mary Todd Lincoln: Your journal... the one you always kept in your coat pocket... I know I shouldn't have, Abe, but I needed to know what you were hiding...
- [to Henry]
- Mary Todd Lincoln: If what you say is true, I beg you... give us our little boy back.
- Abraham Lincoln: Mary, he wouldn't be our little boy. He would be something else, something terrible. Trust me, you don't want that.
- Mary Todd Lincoln: You're asking me to trust you, after you lied to me for all these years?
- Abraham Lincoln: I did it to protect you, to protect our family.
- Abraham Lincoln: [in a note with his journal] I leave in your trusted hands, my dear friend Henry... this record that begins when I was just a boy.