The power that causes the compass to point to the north, that dismisses the star on its pathway through the skies, promising that in a thousand years it shall return again true to its hour and keeps His word, will vindicate His own moral…

As surely as the path on which our fathers entered a hundred years ago led to safety, to strength, to glory, so surely will the path on which we now propose to enter bring us to shame, to weakness, and to peril.

The sentiment of the country has passed, certainly so far as it is represented by a majority of the Senate, the stage, if it ever was in it, of a reckless seeking to accomplish the result of Chinese exclusion without regard to…

But I cannot agree with the principle on which this legislation or any legislation on the subject which we have had in the country since 1870 rests.

I hold that every human soul has its rights, dependent upon its individual personal worth and not dependent upon color or race, and that all races, all colors, all nationalities contain persons entitled to be recognized everywhere they go…

I know very well that the American people mean to do right, and I believe with all my heart that the men and the party with whom I have acted for fifty years mean to do right.

But every man's conscience is given to him as the lamp for his path.

The Treaty of Washington, creditable to all who engaged in it, not to be judged by its details, but by its great effect in securing peace to the world, saved Great Britain from a war with us, in which it is not unlikely that the nations of…

I would rather the United States should occupy the position of paying that award, after calling the attention of England to its injustice and wrong, than to occupy the position of England when she pocketed the money.

The terror of these Confederate vessels had driven our commerce from the sea, or had compelled our merchant vessels to sail under foreign flags, and had enormously increased the rate of insurance to those who kept the sea under our flag.

There was no doubt anywhere, that the owners of vessels or cargoes that had been captured or destroyed by the cruisers for whose departure from British ports Great Britain was in fault, were entitled to be paid.

If there be anything likely to induce a man with legal or judicial instincts to set his teeth against a proposition, it is that style of argument.

But I came to the conclusion, both from the history of the proceedings at Geneva, and from the nature of the submission, that the claim that had been established against Great Britain was a National claim, made by National authority for a…

Seldom any doubt is raised now as to the Constitutional power of the National Government to accomplish and secure any of the great results which we could not secure before the war, by reason of what is called the doctrine of State Rights.

Democrat and Republican, men of the South and men of the North, now agree in exercising without a scruple the power of Congress to protect American interests by the tariff, to endow and to subsidize railroads across the continent, and to…

I have in my possession, in Roger Sherman's and James Madison's handwriting, a paper which contains the first statement of a controversy which divided parties and sections, which inspired Nullification, and which entered largely in the…

The decision that is at this time made will become the permanent exposition of the Constitution; and on a permanent exposition of the Constitution will depend the genius and character of the whole Government.

It could not have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution that the Senate should have the power to retain in office persons placed there by Federal appointment, against the will of the President.

What faith can an Executive put in officials forced on him, and those, too, whom he has suspended for reason?

How will such officials be likely to serve an Administration which they know does not trust them?

The Democratic Party has invariably supported the position of Madison and Jackson, that the power of removal is vested by the Constitution in the President, and cannot be controlled by legislation.

Edmunds's Constitutional argument as a mere ingenious device to protract the day when their political fate should overtake the Republican officials.

I still think the position of the Senate right, and that of the President wrong.

The result proved the soundness of my judgment.

I do not think a man can be found in the Senate now who would wish to go back to the law which was passed to put fetters on the limbs of Andrew Johnson.