Josiah Quincy

After examining their proceedings with minuteness and searching severity, he asserted that they were without authority, and in flagrant violation of the rights of the bank, and of the principles on which the freedom of this people had been…

The South Carolinians are attempting to govern the Union as they govern their slaves, and there are too many indications that, abetted as they are by all the slave-driving interest of the Union, the free portion will cower before them, and…

The domineering spirit naturally springs from the institution of slavery; and when, as in South Carolina, the slaves are more numerous than their masters, the domineering spirit is wrought up to its highest pitch of intenseness.

In his hands was lodged the power of reward and punishment, to be exercised ruthlessly for party support and perpetuation; resulting, in the higher departments, in tame submission to the will of the chief, and, in the lower, in the…

Adams, he deliberately declared to the Legislature of Tennessee his firm conviction that no member of Congress ought to be appointed to any office except a seat on the bench; and he added that he himself would conform to that rule.

He dismissed from office, without trial, without charge, and without fault, faithful and able men.

Enough has been given to indicate the great influence Van Buren had acquired, for his own political advancement, by an unscrupulous subserviency to the overbearing violence of the President.

Adams replied: "I well know this; but labor I shall not refuse so long as my hands, my eyes, and my brain, do not desert me.

England, earnestly and zealously occupied in rallying the physical, moral, and intellectual energies of the civilized world against the African slave-trade, had scarcely yet discovered that it was but an instrument, and in truth a…

The development of the moral principle which pronounced slavery a crime of man against his brother-man had not yet reached the conscience of Christendom.

I had spent the greatest part of my life in the service of the whole nation, and had been honored by their highest trust; my duty of fidelity, of affection, and of gratitude, to the whole, was not merely inseparable from, but identical…

The event of a conflict in arms between the Union and one of its members, whether terminating in victory or defeat, would be but an alternative of calamity to all.

The pretence of an absolute, irresistible, despotic power, existing in every government somewhere, is incompatible with the first principle of natural right.

Least of all can it be predicated of any government professing to be founded upon an original compact.

Unlimited power belongs not to the nature of man, and rotten will be the foundation of every government leaning upon such a maxim for its support.

The sternest despotisms, in every region and every age of the world, are and have been under perpetual control; compelled, as Burke expresses it, to truckle and huckster.

Uncontrollable power exists in no government upon earth.

To this end one third of the people is perverted, one third slumbers, and the rest wring their hands, with unavailing lamentations, in the foresight of evils they cannot avert.

The Union is in the most imminent danger of dissolution from the old, inherent vice of confederacies, anarchy in the members.

As the Executive and Legislature now fail to sustain the Judiciary, it is not improbable cases may arise in which the Judiciary may fail to sustain them.

The arm refuses its office. 'The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.' This example of the State of Georgia will be imitated by other states, and with regard to other national interests,--perhaps the tariff, more probably the…

A majority of both houses of Congress sustain this neglect and violation of duty.

None; because the State of Georgia is in league with the Executive of the United States, who will not take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The constitution, the laws, and treaties, of the United States, are prostrate in the State of Georgia.

He saw the gross inconsistency between the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the fact of negro slavery; and he could not, or would not, prostitute the faculties of his mind to the vindication of that slavery, which, from…