Horace Mann

All our substantial, industrious classes are above this temptation, and would spurn it if they were not above it.

No, this is nothing but a clumsy trick of the politicians; and if any one of them could be nominated for the presidency, we should hear nothing more from him about any deluge which threatens to submerge the Union.

If the south wishes to dissolve the Union, let them do it, and at the end of thirty years there will be no slave in all their borders.

With such facts before us, to say that the Union has been in danger is as absurd as to say that a whirlwind is raging when the leaf of the aspen is pendulous, and cannot be seen to move.

The great bankers abroad who deal in our stocks have never changed their terms one mill in a million of dollars, through any such idle fear.

Confidence in the stability of our Union has not only pervaded this country, but other countries.

Why, what would the English national debt be worth under any well-founded apprehension that the British monarchy was crumbling to pieces?

Show me one intelligent man in the whole country who has sold his stocks or his farm, or changed his residence, or altered his course of life in any respect, through fear that the Union was about to be dissolved.

As for that bugbear of a dissolution of the Union, I say, without fear of contradiction, that no practical man has ever believed in it for a day.

The south must have their goods from somewhere, and our industrious artisans will make them, whoever the go-betweens may be.

Even if this appeal were true, it would be one that no honorable man could hear without indignation.

Every man who upholds this Fugitive Slave law acts them, whatever his language may be.

O, how these declarations contrast with what a manufacturer in a neighboring county is reported to have said,--that if he could work his mills any cheaper with slave labor than with free, he would employ slaves!

Not every man engaged in manufactures or in commerce has yielded to the seductions of this tempter.

I rejoice that this reference to the demoralizing power of interest gives me an opportunity to bestow well-deserved honor and praise upon a class of men who have nobly withstood its temptations.

Even should this hope fail, every body sees what an unnatural attitude of power and strength the cotton-producing states now occupy.

Improvements in the arts give confident promise that some new textile substance will soon be discovered which will supersede this slave-made and slave-making material.

But I believe that the reign of Cotton is to be short-lived.

God grant that this kind of cotton may never stuff the cushions of our judges!

Still worse is it, when this cotton, so diabolically impregnated, gets beneath the rich velvet seats and embossed cushions of the pulpit;--unless, indeed, a double measure of the spirit of the Lord shall descend upon the preacher and…

The eyes and ears and nose and mouth of a portion of our people have been so filled with cotton, that they have come to consider cotton not only as their daily bread, but their bread of life.

It has been said that the Press is the fourth estate in the realm; but I say Cotton is the fourth estate, for Cotton subdues the Press.

Their chance for a tariff lay in standing to their principles like men, and not in abandoning them like cowards.

When their real interests were all on the side of freedom, they have been made to believe that it would promote those interests to unsay all they had ever said, and undo all they had ever done adverse to slavery.

The commercial and manufacturing interests of the north, then, have been deceived, grossly deceived and imposed upon.