It was the peculiar glory of this illustrious man, that from his early days to his death-bed he strove always for Human Freedom, and especially sought to remove the intolerable evil of African Slavery.

To leave so great a part of his life untouched would be an infidelity I cannot commit.

If at any other time it might be done, you will see that at this moment, when persons acting in behalf of Slavery openly threaten treason, silence upon testimony so powerful would be nearly akin to complicity with the treason.

The pirates of the Caribbean Sea are said to have carefully recited the Ten Commandments, omitting ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ A precedent like this I have no disposition to follow.

Even if the subject of my lecture did not require me to infringe your instructions, I beg to assure you that I could not consent to speak under any such constraint.

For many years I have addressed associations, societies, and meetings of all kinds; but never before have I been met by any hint of interference with the completest latitude of speech, according to my sense of the duties and proprieties of…

Sumner had striven to direct public opinion against Slavery, so at least that it should not be carried into the Territories.

I can bear yet a little longer the misrepresentations in the President’s Message, and I believe the North can bear them yet a little longer.

The time will come, perhaps, when I shall deem it my duty to set forth those things in the light of reason and of history; meanwhile I content myself with simply offering to the Senate testimony of direct and most authoritative bearing…

Haman’s gallows ought to be the fate of all such ambitious men, who would involve their country in civil war, and all the evils in its train, that they might reign and ride on its whirlwinds and direct the storm.

The free people of these United States have spoken, and consigned these wicked demagogues to their proper doom.

Take care of your Nullifiers; you have them among you; let them meet with the indignant frowns of every man who loves his country.

If this is not protection, I cannot understand; therefore the Tariff was only the pretext, and Disunion and a Southern Confederacy the real object.

Words and judgment now belong to history; nor can they be assailed without assailing one of the greatest examples that a slaveholding community has given to our common country.

That such propositions could have been seriously presented as a basis of Union shows the exacting spirit of Slavery, and the deplorable insensibility to great principles.

Their conduct on this occasion showed a “foregone conclusion.” Nothing but Disunion would satisfy them,--not even the Crittenden Compromise, so full of surrender.

The Constitution of the United States is written in excellent English; but if this amendment be expressed in the English language, or by any rule of grammar, I do not understand it.

For those who yield, I care not what becomes of them.

Sumner regards that call as part of the treasonable conspiracy against the National Government, and does not see how Northern men can have anything to do with it, unless they are ready in some way to play into the hands of the traitors.

Sumner has always held that any change by the North from its attitude of firmness and repose can have no other effect than the encouragement of treason.

The telegraph assigns you the enviable position of standing ‘solitary and alone’ among the Massachusetts representatives, as inflexibly opposed to compromise with rebels for the benefit of Slavery.

Indeed, it were far better that Slavery should triumph under the rule of Douglas or Breckinridge than under the rule of Lincoln.

Her most difficult duty is to be true to herself and her own noble history.

In the name of Liberty, I supplicate you not to let her take any backward step,--not an inch, not a hair’s breadth.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.