What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by merely calling it a State?

On what rightful principle may a State, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way?

Let us get exact definitions of these words, not from dictionaries, but from the men themselves, who certainly deprecate the things they would represent by the use of words.

I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington.

Trusting in Him, who can go with me and remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.

This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from…

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.

Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

To do so, would be to discard all the lights of current experience--to reject all progress, all improvement.

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.

If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively.

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the…

A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!

But you will not abide the election of a Republican President!

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.

True, we do, in common with "our fathers who framed the government under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this.

You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true is simply malicious slander.

If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times.

We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the government under which we live"; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy…

Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it?

Then you really believe that the principle which "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as…

You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be…