Second, Involuntary servitude shall be forever prohibited, and the freedom of all persons in the State guaranteed.

Third, No debt, State or Confederate, created in aid of the rebellion shall ever be paid.

Though the least pretentious of men, he had an abounding self-respect and a full appreciation of the dignity and power of his office.

He had given careful study to the duties, the responsibilities, and the limitations of the respective departments of the Government, and he was not willing that his judgment should be revised or his course censured, however indirectly, by…

If I should sign your resolution without explanation, it might imply my right to veto it, and thereby take from you your undoubted Constitutional power.

You are really guilty of weakening your own prerogatives under the Constitution by asking me to assent to their existence.

We say to the white man, you are worthless or worse.

We will neither help you nor be helped by you.

We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of twelve thousand men to adhere to their work and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success.

The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance and with energy and daring to the same end.

He will yet attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps towards it than by running backward over them.

Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.

On all questions of expediency the President maintained not only the right but the frequent necessity of change.

I desire to proclaim that Tennessee, whose representative I have been, is free.

She has bent the tyrant's rod, she has broken the yoke of slavery, she stands to-day redeemed.

It is the doctrine of the Federal Constitution that no State can go out of this Union.

Thank God, Tennessee has never been out of the Union!

We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the Government is to get them back into their proper practical relation.

The essential difference between the upholders and the opponents of this theory was not shown in the practical treatment proposed for the States which had been in rebellion.

An extra session of Congress seemed specially desirable at the time, and had one been summoned by the President, many of the troubles which subsequently resulted might have been averted.

Indeed, to the Executive Department of the Government, Congress, even in its regular sessions, is a guest whose coming is not welcomed with half the heartiness with which its departure is speeded.

But an extra session, especially at the beginning of an Administration, is looked upon with almost superstitious aversion, and is always to be avoided if possible.

He believed that unwise discussion of the slavery question had brought our troubles upon us, and that it would be inexcusable to continue an agitation which portended trouble in another form.

The policy which he desired to see adopted was that which should restore the Rebel States to their old relations with the Union upon the freest possible conditions and within the shortest possible time.

The wonder excited by the raising of the vast army which saved the Union from destruction was even surpassed by the wonder excited by its prompt and peaceful dissolution.