I had pretty good company, not in the least due to any merit or standing of my own, but only because the men who were enlisted for the war in the great political battle against slavery were bound to each other by a tie to which no…

I do not think there was ever so good a political organization in the country before, or that there ever has been a better one since.

Three things stood in the way of lovers of liberty in the Commonwealth.

Its standard of personal character was of the highest.

Its leading men--Saltonstall, Reed, Lawrence, Lincoln, Briggs, Allen, Ashmun, Choate, Winthrop, Davis, Everett, and their associates--were men whose private and public honor was without a stain.

It contained a large body of able and influential men who wielded the power of absolute disinterestedness.

They were satisfied if they could contribute, by counsel or labor, to the well-being of the State by the advancement of their cherished political principles.

The Whigs were in favor of using wisely, but courageously, the forces of the Nation and State to accomplish public objects for which private powers or municipal powers were inadequate.

The Whig policy had made Massachusetts known the world over as the model Commonwealth.

It had established asylums for the blind and insane and deaf and dumb, and had made liberal gifts to schools.

They asked from the National Government only a system of protection that should foster home manufacture, and that they might pursue their commercial and manufacturing occupation in peace.

The Whigs of Massachusetts disliked slavery; but they loved the Union.

The manufacturer and the merchant dreaded an estrangement that would cause the loss of their southern trade, and with it all hope of a law that would protect their manufactures.

Hoar of Middlesex answered, that "he thought it quite as desirable that the Legislature should represent the conscience as the cotton of the Commonwealth.

If any man wishes to read me out of the pale of that communion, let him begin, here, now, on the spot, and we will see who goes out first.

He knew well that a little more or less of rhetoric signified nothing; he was only to say plain and equal things--grand things, if he had them; and if he had them not, only to abstain from saying unfit things--and the whole occasion was…

And when both we and our children shall have been consigned to the house appointed for all living, may love of country and pride of country glow with equal fervor among those to whom our names and our blood shall have descended!

All is not lost; the unconquerable will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield, And what is else not be overcome.

I do not think the employment of a Senator of the United States as counsel before the Legislature would be approved by public opinion now.

Is it not because we have here a sufficient, ample, safe, secure, convenient, commodious, port, harbor, haven?" Of course when the speech came to be printed all the synonyms but the best one would be left out.

He had disappointed them by opposing the resolution they offered at the Whig State Convention, pledging the party to support no candidate not known by his acts or declared opinions to be opposed to the extension of slavery.

He declared in the Senate, as late as 1848: "My opposition to the increase of slavery in the country, or to the increase of slave representation in Congress, is general and universal.

I shall oppose all such extension, and all such increase, at all times, under all circumstances, even against all inducements, against all combinations, against all compromises.

But the nomination of General Taylor, a Southerner, one of the largest slaveholders in the country, whose laurels had been gained in the odious Mexican War, upon a platform silent upon the engrossing subject of the extension of slavery…

He has fallen at the very gate of an honorable and eminent career, and a thousand hopes are buried in his grave.