Historical voices

But we desire to reach out beyond those personal outrages and establish a rule that will apply to all, and so prevent any future outrages.

We know that great political and moral wrongs are done, and outrages committed, and we denounce those wrongs and outrages, although we cannot, at present, do much more.

We are here to stand firmly for a principle--to stand firmly for a right.

We have higher aims; we will have more serious business than to dally with temporary measures.

We must not be led by excitement and passion to do that which our sober judgments would not approve in our cooler moments.

But we must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot; we must be calm and moderate, and consider the whole difficulty, and determine what is possible and just.

I think it just to say that all true men North should sympathize with them, and ought to be willing to do any possible and needful thing to right their wrongs.

When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy....

When the Know-nothings get control, it will read, all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.

We now practically read it, all men are created equal except negroes.

As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are created equal.

How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favour of degrading classes of white people?

The slave-breeders and slave-traders are a small, odious, and detested class among you; and yet in politics they dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters as you are the master of your own negroes.

All decent slaveholders talk that way, and I do not doubt their candour; but they never vote that way.

Standing as a unit among yourselves, you can, directly and indirectly, bribe enough of our men to carry the day, as you could on the open proposition to establish a monarchy.

I am very loath in any case to withhold my assent to the enjoyment of property acquired or located in good faith; but I do not admit that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas to be held in slavery is a probability with any man.

In my humble sphere, I shall advocate the restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as Kansas remains a Territory; and when, by all these foul means, it seeks to come into the Union as a slave State, I shall oppose it.

If, like Haman, they should hang upon the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among the mourners for their fate.

By every principle of law ever held by any court North or South, every negro taken to Kansas is free; yet in utter disregard of this--in the spirit of violence merely--that beautiful Legislature gravely passes a law to hang any man who…

It is maintained in violence, because the elections since clearly demand its repeal, and the demand is openly disregarded.

It was passed in violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence of the known will of their constituents.

It was conceived in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence.

I look upon that enactment, not as a law, but as a violence from the beginning.

If for this you and I must differ, differ we must.