John Creswell: “You can have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to…”

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

The appeal was spurned; and, in the face of its almost godlike gentleness, they who already gloried in their anticipated saturnalia of blood inhumanly and falsely stigmatized it as a declaration of war.

For him unfading laurels are secure, so long as letters shall survive and history shall continue to be the guide and teacher of civilized men.

Speaker, I am here this day to speak, and I say that I do speak, for the people of Maryland, who are loyal to the United States; and that when my judgment is contested, I appeal to the people for its accuracy, and I am ready to maintain it…