Is there any reason that will satisfactorily account for His Lordship's abandonment of this ideal relation of friendship between the two countries except that he saw a speedier way of adding to the power of England by conniving at the…

The relations of nations are not and should not be governed by sentiment.

The interest and ambition of states, like those of men, will disturb the moral sense and incline to one side or the other the strict balance of impartial justice.

Let the past be the past, but let it be the past with all the instruction and the warning of its experience.

The future safety of these continents rests upon the strength and the maintenance of the Union, for had dissolution been possible, events have shown with what small regard the interests or the honor of either of the belligerents would have…

It has been taught to the smaller republics that if this strength be shattered they will be the spoil of foreign arms and the dependent provinces again of foreign monarchs.

When this contest was over, the day of immaturity had passed and the United States stood before the world a great and permanent Power.

On such occasions, especially, the military power must be kept in strict subordination to the civil authority, since it is only in aid of the latter that the former can act at all.

But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…

Without the exercise of those functions which belong exclusively to the civil service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be the physical strength which the Government has at its command.

Under such circumstances, to send a military force into any State, with orders to act against the people, would be simply making war upon them.

You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.

All these provisions are made to protect the States, not to authorize an attack by one part of the country upon another; to preserve the peace, and not to plunge them into civil war.

If it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of general hostilities carried on by the Central Government against a State, then it seems to follow that an attempt to do so would be ipso facto an expulsion of such State from the…

And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure…

Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?

The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its whole constitutional vigor by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon its property or its officers cannot be denied.

But this is a totally different thing from an offensive war to punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State Government, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States is supreme.

The States are colleagues of one another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon which they are now connected.

If this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General…

In military matters he would "rather trust the commanding general of the army than a committee of the House.

Why not send them with our army so that the power of Congress may be felt in battle as well as in the halls of legislation?

To be President, to be king, to be victor, has happened to many; to be embalmed in the hearts of mankind through all generations as liberator and emancipator has been vouchsafed to few.

This is the doctrine of despotism, better becoming that empire which they are attempting to establish in the South.

And now I will swear that this government has not a more faithful soldier, of poor capacity it may be, but not a more faithful soldier from the day I was called into service to this minute.