It is well known that the war with Mexico was provoked, and violently precipitated upon the country, in order to extend the domain and the power of slavery.

In negotiating for the cession of California and New Mexico, the Mexican commissioners strove to introduce a prohibition against slavery into the treaty.

Polk’s administration, and all its southern friends, adhered to their original purpose of obtaining new territory for slavery.

The present six months’ contest, in the Senate and House, between the north and the south, is conducted solely on the conviction that slavery may exist in the territories; and that it will or will not exist there, according as the law…

Otherwise it would be the most nonsensical and nugatory discussion ever engaged in out of a lunatic asylum.

Once make it as clear as any law of physical nature, that slavery can never transgress the bounds of the new territories, and there is not a man so demented that he would any longer contend either for the proviso, or against it.

Since the speech, the people of New Mexico have prohibited slavery in their constitution, because they knew it to be possible among them.

Before the speech, California did the same, and for the same reason.

If the nature of the climate and resources of these countries are such as to furnish a profitable market for slave labor, it appears to be conceded, on all sides, that it would be introduced, if left free to seek profitable investment…

If slave labor is like other capital, if it will go where it is best paid, then we have a right to say it will seek these mines, and become a part of the producing capital of the country where those mines are located.

Hence, were I a southern man, and my property invested in slaves, I should consider the markets of New Mexico, Utah, and California, for slave labor, worthy of an honorable contest to secure.

It is said by “members of Congress” from Vermont, that an alleged fugitive was carried before Judge Harrington of Vermont, in 1807, and on his being asked what evidence would satisfy him that the person was a slave, he replied, “A bill of…

It has been, in times past, the misfortune of the Society of Friends to be vilified, caricatured, and misrepresented; but we remember nothing, even in the old days of persecution, so hard to bear as the compliments of the Massachusetts…

Whatever his ‘authority’ may have been, we do not hesitate to pronounce it unqualifiedly false to the last degree.

I regard the Ordinance which redeemed a territory of more than two hundred and sixty thousand square miles, from the unspeakable sin and curse of slavery, and consecrated it to freedom, as one of the grandest moral events in the annals of…

Without the Ordinance, the Revolution itself, in its application to that territory, and the treaty of 1783, by which its ample domain was secured to the Union, would have been shorn of their glory, and robbed of their value.

Without the Ordinance, the discovery of this Western continent, so far as that territory constitutes a part of it, would have given us no occasion to remember the name of Columbus with gratitude.

And without the Ordinance, it is no irreverence to say, that even the omnipotent Spirit of God, working through natural laws, for human progress and human blessedness, would have met with bafflings and threatenings in its operations and…

I know that the leading and most valued article in your creed is the sacredness and security of human freedom.

You know that I embrace this same article of faith with my whole heart.

I believe that the money, and the comforts purchasable with it, which such competitions take from the workman here, do not go to improve the condition of the workman there, but are intercepted and appropriated by others.

I make this statement of my views all the more readily, because I do not wish to receive an unintelligent vote from any man, and I therefore abjure all disguises and reserves.

The cause of liberty is one in which the true object of ambition is to make great principles most clear, and not to use harsh expressions respecting the conduct or opinion of others.

It is as necessary that the man whom I would convince should be in a calm state of mind, as that I should be in such a state myself.

The great points on which men and parties so vehemently differ, can only be permanently settled at the tribunal of reason and conscience.