The business of these offices will be better done, and there will be a staff of educated experts, familiar with foreign life, whose knowledge and experience, even if not always in the service of Government, will pass into the capital stock…

Granted; it is needed very much in the diplomatic service; but because needed there, is that any reason why we should not supply it here?

To discharge their duties fitly, they should be familiar with the interests of commerce, how it is conducted, and the language it employs, where they happen to be.

And permit me to say, that a great country like ours, one of whose chief sources of wealth and of grandeur is commerce, must not hesitate to supply the education needed to secure commercial representatives not unworthy of the Republic they…

To send abroad consuls without proper education must necessarily bring the national character into disrepute, and jeopard the concerns intrusted to them.

In your answer, do not forget, I entreat you, its infinite, far-reaching, many-sided importance.

For the sake of our good name abroad, which is part of our national possessions, and also for the sake of those vast commercial concerns which encircle the globe, I hope that this proposition, which is a small beginning in the right…

Could his wishes prevail, Senators would continue in their seats and help enact into law some one of the several measures pending to secure the obliteration of Slavery.

He spoke well always, but he believed in deeds rather than words, although speech with him was a deed.

Words may be often “the daughters of earth,” but there was little of earth in his.

Proceeding from a pure and generous heart, they have so far prevailed, even during his life, that they must be named gratefully among those good influences by which the triumph has been won.

In vain you pass resolutions in tribute to him, if you neglect that cause for which he lived, and hearken not to his voice.

It is a battle-field of the war; and victory at the polls will assure victory everywhere.

He did not doubt the great result; but he longed to be at his post again, to teach his fellow-citizens, and to teach Congress, how vain to expect an end of the Rebellion without making an end of Slavery.

I could not speak at his funeral, if I were expected to unite in robbing his grave of any of these honors derived from his transcendent courage and discernment in the trials of the present hour.

It is easy to see that he scorned the wicked fantasy that man can hold property in man.

This pernicious delusion, which is the source of such intolerable pretensions on the part of slave-masters, and, worse still, of such intolerable irresolution on the part of many professing opposition to Slavery, could get no hold of him.

It is vast in its relations to our own country,--vaster still in its relations to other countries.

He knew that it was a preposterous falsehood, as wicked as false, born of prejudice and supreme credulity, and therefore he brushed aside as cobweb all the fine-spun snares of law or Constitution so ingeniously woven in its support.

Recognizing Freedom as the God-given birthright of all who wear the human form, he knew no duty higher than to protect it always; and to this end law and Constitution must minister.

He had never been a judge, and was not even a lawyer, so that the technicalities and subtilties of the profession had no chance of enslaving him.

Besides, to a nature like his, independent and self-poised, what were the sophisms of learning and skill, when employed in the support of Wrong?

Overthrow Slavery here, and you overthrow it everywhere,--in Cuba, Brazil, and wherever a slave clanks his chain.

It was enough, that, wherever Slavery appeared, it was in defiance of that commanding law of Right, before which all unjust pretensions, whatever form they take, must disappear like the morning dew under the flashing arrows of the…

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