Several of the Free Soilers, among which I was included, were unwilling to have the matter tried again without a distinct assurance that there should be no meddling with the judiciary.

Edward Everett preached a sermon when he was twenty-four years old before a large audience in the Representatives Chamber at Washington which was heard with breathless silence.

The referendum, a scheme by which men charged with political duties avoid responsibility by submitting to the people measures which they fear may be unpopular, --has never found much favor in Massachusetts.

After many changes of sentiment, and after passing, modifying, and repealing many laws, the people of the Commonwealth seem to have settled down on a policy which permits each town or city to decide by vote whether the sale of liquor shall…

But I think if the men who signed that report, and the men who joined them in giving the assurance to the people, had been earnest and zealous in the matter it is quite likely they could have prevented the action of the Convention.

The Whig leaders, who seemed to have had all their wisdom and energy taken out of them when the Free Soilers left them, were much alarmed by the strength of the discontent with the existing order of things manifested by the coalition…

I was myself, at this time, an enthusiastic Free Soiler, and was, as I have said, Chairman of the Republican County Committee, but I joined the rebels against the dominant feeling of my party.

The defeat of the Constitution was aided, however, undoubtedly by a very just and righteous proposal which was submitted to a separate vote of the people, but which had its effect on the feeling in regard to the whole scheme, to prohibit…

So long as the State makes the laws, the State, whether acting by a popular vote or through its executive, should have the power to enforce them and select the instrumentalities for that purpose.

Now if the particular law which the State enacts be unpopular in a particular county, and the people be determined to defeat it, no Sheriff or District Attorney can be elected who will enforce it.

The officials appointed solely to enforce a law against which there are strong objections in any quarter are always themselves unpopular.

But in the case of these particular laws persons of less dignity and authority, often quite obscure when they are appointed, whose whole duty is odious to the persons to be affected by it, instead of giving dignity to the law tend to make…

Indeed in my opinion the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 was as nearly a perfect system of government as was ever devised.

With the exception of the Convention that framed the Constitution in the beginning, and the Convention which revised it in 1820, after the separation from Maine, I doubt whether so able a body of men ever assembled in the Commonwealth of…

The debates, which are preserved in three thick and almost forgotten volumes, are full of instructive and admirable essays on the theory of constitutional government.

No hand feeds me that has a right to control my opinions!

The people of Massachusetts felt the most profound interest in the great conflict between slavery and freedom for the possession of the vast territory between the Mississippi and the Pacific.

But almost every man in Massachusetts felt the Fugitive Slave Law as a personal dishonor.

I think no great public calamity, not the death of Webster, not the death of Sumner, not the loss of great battles during the War, brought such a sense of gloom over the whole State as the surrender of Anthony Burns and of Sims.

This odious statute was, perhaps, the greatest single cause of the union of the people of the North in opposition to the further encroachments of slavery.

He also dwelt upon what he conceived to be the unfair dealing of the Commissioners who had presided at the trial of the three slaves who had been tried in Massachusetts, and added: "Pilate, fellow-citizens, was at least a Judge, though he…

But I think it will take a good deal of evidence to convince him that one man owns another.

I was pretty well known through the city as an earnest Free Soiler, and as sharing the public feeling of indignation against the delivering up of fugitives.

I reminded the crowd that my father and sister had been expelled from Charleston, S.

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