Albert Beveridge

Bills were put in circulation purporting to have been issued by distant banks that did not exist, and never had existed.

Merchants and traders ... are harassed and perplexed by twenty different systems of municipal laws, often repugnant to each other and themselves; always defective; seldom executed in good faith; prolific in endless frauds, perjuries, and…

Fortunate, indeed, was it for the United States, at this critical time in its development, that one department of the Government could not be swayed by the passion of the hour, and thrice happy that the head of that department was John…

Our young men, generally speaking, grow up in the firm belief that liberty depends on construing our Constitution into a league instead of a government; that it has nothing to fear from breaking these United States into numerous petty…

Nothing in their view is to be feared but that bugbear, consolidation; and every exercise of legitimate power is construed into a breach of the Constitution.

In the South, we are so far gone in political metaphysics, that I fear no demonstration can restore us to common sense.

The word 'State Rights,' as expounded by the resolutions of '98 and the report of '99, construed by our legislature, has a charm against which all reasoning is vain.

Lament it as we may, much as it may wound our vanity or our pride, it is still, in the main, true; and will, I fear, so remain....

In the South, political prejudice is too strong to yield to any degree of merit; and the great body of the nation contains, at least appears to me to contain, too much of the same ingredient.

To men who think as you and I do, the present is gloomy enough; and the future presents no cheering prospect.

They sustain the personal power of the President, but labor incessantly to impair the legitimate powers of the Government.

Those who oppose the violent and rash measures of the Executive (many of them nullifiers, many of them seceders) are generally the bitter enemies of a constitutional government.

As far as I can judge, the Government is weakened, whatever party may prevail.

Posterity will assuredly confirm, by its deliberate award, what the present age has approved, as an act of undisputed justice.

It is doubtful whether history shows more than a few examples of an aged man, ill, disheartened, and knowing that he soon must die, who nevertheless continued his work to the very last with such scrupulous care as did Marshall.

Thus it was that the American colonists suddenly came to think that they themselves must be their own defenders.

It was a remarkable parentage that produced this child who in manhood was to become the master-builder of American Nationality.

When the gentle Randolph-Isham blood mingled with the sturdier currents of the common people, the result was a human product stronger, steadier, and abler than either.

So, when Jane Randolph became the wife of Peter Jefferson, a man from the grass roots, the result was Thomas Jefferson.

Thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny ... the man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved....

With the morals of the people their industry also is destroyed.

For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him....

These chosen families naturally became the backbone of the frontier; and from them came the strong men of the advanced settlements.

The life stories of these men largely make up the history of their country while they lived; and it was chiefly their words and works, their thought and purposes, that gave form and direction, on American soil, to those political and…

Bacon's Rebellion deserves the careful study of all who would understand the beginnings of the democratic movement in America.