Franklin Pierce: “The merchants, mariners, and shipbuilders of the United States are, it is true, unsurpassed in far-reaching enterprise…”

And then both reason and right combine not merely to justify but to require its repeal.

They do not admit that the sovereigns of one continent or of a particular community of states can legislate for all others.

Interpreted and applied according to those principles, the great compact adapts itself with healthy ease and freedom to an unlimited extension of that benign system of federative self-government of which it is our glorious and, I trust…

This rapid growth has resulted from the legitimate exercise of sovereign rights belonging alike to all nations, and by many liberally exercised.