Whitelaw Reid: “What would more thoroughly insure its speedily flying to pieces than the lack of every one of these requisites?”

Let those who invoke the Supreme Law of the land learn and bow to it.

Brushing aside, then, these bugbears, gentlemen, what are the obvious duties of the hour?

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

I would rather give up my crop to the negroes than the lives of my wife and children.