Coal is the fuel under the British pot which makes it boil.

It enters, therefore, into the welfare of the community; and you cannot tax coal without making the whole community feel it, whether rich or poor.

If I said the rich man felt it, you would reply, “That makes no difference; let him feel it.” I insist that every poor man feels it; and I insist further, that all who are interested in the manufactures of the country necessarily feel…

I say, that, as a motive power, it should be made cheap and kept cheap.

I like the Senator’s argument just where he is now; but I wish to ask him whether, if by a tariff you raise the price of every yard of cheap woollen goods and cheap cotton goods, it is not a direct tax on the labor of the poor man of the…

I do not think you should tax coal as you tax other articles; and, further, I do not think you should impose any tax bearing with special hardship, so as to be something akin to injustice, on any particular part of our country.

Are you willing to take the chance of a Vice-President becoming President a few weeks after the beginning of the six years’ term, and then serving out that full term?

It is too much with a view to certain political considerations, and possibly to aid the election of the President, rather than to secure the services of one in all respects competent to be President.

I submit that we do not meet all the difficulties of the present hour, unless we go still further and provide against abnormal troubles from the nomination of a Vice-President selected less with reference to fitness than to transient…

It seems to me that the evil we wish to guard against in the case of the President naturally arises in the case of a Vice-President who becomes President.

The three cases in our history which distinctly teach the necessity of the Amendment before us are of three Vice-Presidents who in the providence of God became Presidents.

It is to meet the difficulties found to arise from a Vice-President becoming President, and then hearkening to the whisperings and temptations which unhappily visit a person in his situation, that we have been led to contemplate the…

Such an Amendment would give every individual voter, wherever he might be, a positive weight in the election.

It would give minorities in distant States an opportunity of being heard in determining who shall be Chief Magistrate.

I know nothing that would contribute more to bring all the people, to mass all the people, into one united whole, than to make the President directly eligible by their votes.

All I ask is, that, when the House comes to vote upon that amendment, it shall understand that the adoption of it would be an entire surrender of those States into the hands of the Rebels.

Both must be had, and neither should be antagonized with the other.

The two should go on side by side,--guardian angels of the Republic.

Never was Congress called to consider measures of more vital importance.

I am so much in earnest for the passage of these bills, that I shall cheerfully forego any amendment of my own, if I find it to be the general sentiment of those truly in earnest for the bills that we ought not to attempt amendments.

It is impossible not to see that the special difficulty of the present moment springs from the bad man who sits in the executive chair.

More than once before I have recalled the saying of Catholic Europe, “All roads lead to Rome.” So now, among us, do all roads lead to the President.

We attempt nothing which does not bring us face to face with him, precisely as during the Rebellion we attempted nothing which did not bring us face to face with Jefferson Davis.

It is no argument against legislation that the President will not execute it.

We must do our duty, and insist always that he shall do his.