Whitelaw Reid: “Slavery being destroyed, the Mobilians awaited the lead of the United States in discovering some new mode of…”

Congress is supreme, and, for all the purposes of this department, has all the powers of the people of the United States, except such as have been expressly or by implication reserved in the prohibitions of the Constitution.

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

These Southern Rebels have their fate in their own keeping, and they are nursing their wrath to keep it warm.

As a foreign critic said in comment on one of the addresses: "The author is one man who knows what he thinks about the new policy required by the new situation in which his country is placed, and has the courage and candor to say it.