Historical voices

If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action.

If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very…

If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?

His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States.

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.

Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

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.

The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.

Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism.

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.

If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority.

If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease.

No foresight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable length contain, express provisions for all possible questions.

But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration.

All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them.

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.

Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it?