As those fathers marked it, so let it again be marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.

Let all who believe that "our fathers who framed the government under which we live understood this question just as well, and even better than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it.

We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.

But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your constitutional rights.

You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the…

You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling--that sentiment--by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it.

There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes.

An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them.

The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the institution--the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall never occur on any American soil which is now free from slavery.

The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours.

But he has no right to mislead others who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" were of the same opinion--thus substituting…

I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did.

I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Labour is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn.

We mean to be as deliberate and calm about it as it is possible to be, but as firm and resolved as it is possible for men to be.

We, the Republicans and others forming the opposition of the country, intend "to stand by our guns," to be patient and firm, and in the long run to beat you, whether you take him or not.

If there was a necessary conflict between the white man and the negro, I should be for the white man as much as Judge Douglas; but I say there is no such necessary conflict.

I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

I say, then, in the first place to the Kentuckians that I am what they call, as I understand it, a "Black Republican." I think slavery is wrong, morally and politically.

We mean to remember that you are as good as we; that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circumstances.

We mean to recognize and bear in mind always, that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and to treat you accordingly.

They say there are but two ways,--one is to hire men and to allure them to labour by their consent; the other is to buy the men, and drive them to it, and that is slavery.

The good old maxims of the Bible are applicable, and truly applicable, to human affairs; and in this, as in other things, we may say that he who is not for us is against us; he who gathereth not with us, scattereth.

Did you ever, five years ago, hear of anybody in the world saying that the negro had no share in the Declaration of National Independence; that it did not mean negroes at all; and when "all men" were spoken of, negroes were not included?