- Abraham Lincoln: There is nothing more like eternity than a train ride of eleven days, unless it's two people and a ham.
- Congressman Elihu Washburne: Oh, I'm sure he's split a rail or two in his youth, but he's been a lawyer and a politician ever since. Don't underestimate him
- Office seeker #1: Mr. Lincoln, I'm a life-long republican from Duchess County.
- Abraham Lincoln: Life long? But our party is only six years old!
- Office seeker #1: That's right, life long!
- Abraham Lincoln: To run away when someone is shooting guns at you is a sensible reaction, I think it would be my own.
- Abraham Lincoln: Faced with a battery of guns, I might find myself some nice tree to rest behind.
- Abraham Lincoln: Do you know what this is, Brother Washburne?
- Congressman Elihu Washburne: The Army of the Potomac.
- Abraham Lincoln: No, it is General MacClellen's bodyguard!
- Robert Lincoln: I know politicians, they don't care how grotesque they are, as long as everyone notices them, like the freaks in Mr. Barnum's Museum.
- Abraham Lincoln: [about Edward Everett's speech] My God! The man will speak for three hours before I even get to my feet, so I have prepared a short, short speech.
- [Gettysburg Address]
- Abraham Lincoln: Molly, if there was any danger to an officer on a generals staff at all, they'd call off the war.
- Mary Lincoln: Replace him!
- [MacClellen]
- Abraham Lincoln: With who?
- Mary Lincoln: Anybody!
- Abraham Lincoln: That's the problem, Molly, I can't have anybody, I must have somebody.
- Congressman Elihu Washburne: There is talk of you running for President.
- Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: Don't want the job. Tell the President he has nothing to fear from me.
- Gen. Ulysses S. Grant: Well, I do have a certain political ambition after the war, if I survive. I mean to run for mayor of Galena, and if I win, I mean to have the sidewalk fixed up between my house and the depot.
- Abraham Lincoln: The problem is not my getting killed, Ward, I expect I shall some day. There is no way to stop it. What I fear is being captured by rebels and held for ransom.
- Ward Hill Lamon: How much do you think the rebels would ask for you?
- Abraham Lincoln: It's not how much, it's how many. They want their prisoners of war back. One ugly President swapped for a 100,000 soldiers would be very tempting to 'ol Jeff Davis. You see, sooner or later they will run out of men and we won't. And that's how we'll win.