In battling for the rights of the negro, he deemed it unwise and inconsistent to increase the disabilities of the foreign-born citizen.

His influence, more than that of any other man, had broken down the proscriptive creed of the American party, and turned its members into the Republican ranks.

He grasped a subject with a giant's strength, presented its strong points, and marshaled its details with extraordinary power.

Even those who most decidedly differed from him followed him from one delegation to another allured by the charm of his words.

The power of the mob in controlling public opinion is immeasurable.

In monarchical governments it has dethroned kings, and in republics it dictates candidates.

The devotion to the cause was so sincere and so dominant, that the personal ambitions of a lifetime were subordinated in an instant upon the demand of the popular tribunal whose decision was final.

The discipline of defeat was endured with grace, and self-abnegation was accepted as the supreme duty of the hour.

Hamlin proved a source of strength, and the imparted confidence and courage to the great movement against the Democratic party.

In the four Presidential tickets in the field, every shade of political opinion was represented, but only two of the candidates embodied positive policies.

Lincoln was in favor of prohibiting the extension of slavery by law.

Lincoln gained steadily and derived great strength from the division of his opponents.

If the compromises of those years could not be maintained, the North believed that all compromise was impossible; and they prepared for the struggle which this fact foreshadowed.

They had come to believe that the house divided against itself could not stand; that the Republic half slave, half free, could not endure.

They accepted as their leader the man who proclaimed these truths.

The peaceful revolution was complete when Abraham Lincoln was chosen President of the United States.

Each year the hatred against the North deepened, and the boundary between the free States and the slave States was becoming as marked as a line of fire.

The South would see no way of dealing with Slavery except to strengthen and fortify it at every point.

Even a suggestion for its amelioration was regarded as dangerous to the safety of the State and to the sacredness of the family.

American slave-holders were urging the abolition of the traffic while London merchants were using every effort to continue it, and while Bristol, the very headquarters of the trade, was represented in Parliament by Edmund Burke.

The American wits and critics of that day did not fail to note the significance of the date, and to appreciate the statesmanship and philosophy which led the British Parliament to terminate the trade at the precise moment when the American…

Mirabeau said that words were things; and this word was so used in the proceedings of Secession conventions as to impress the mind of the Southern people with its portentous weight and solemnity.

The South had always contended for the right of States to instruct their senators, but now the Southern senators proceeded to instruct their States.

Stevens, if carried to its legitimate consequences, would make those who resisted the Confederacy in the insurrectionary states guilty of treason to that power; and that therefore "we would be unable to talk of loyal men in the South.

I shall discuss the question whether an organized rebellion against a government is an organized State in that government; whether that which cannot become a State until all its officers have sworn to support the Constitution, remains a…