Franklin Pierce

Perfect liberty of association for political objects and the widest scope of discussion are the received and ordinary conditions of government in our country.

In doing this they have at the same time emphatically condemned the idea of organizing in these United States mere geographical parties, of marshaling in hostile array toward each other the different parts of the country, North or South…

I rely confidently on the patriotism of the people, on the dignity and self-respect of the States, on the wisdom of Congress, and, above all, on the continued gracious favor of Almighty God to maintain against all enemies, whether at home…

I know that the Union is stronger a thousand times than all the wild and chimerical schemes of social change which are generated one after another in the unstable minds of visionary sophists and interested agitators.

The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution.

And are patriotic men in any part of the Union prepared on such issue thus madly to invite all the consequences of the forfeiture of their constitutional engagements?

The interests, the honor, the duty, the peace, and the prosperity of the people of all sections are equally involved and imperiled in this question.

It is either disunion and civil war or it is mere angry, idle, aimless disturbance of public peace and tranquillity.

It is necessary to speak thus plainly of projects the offspring of that sectional agitation now prevailing in some of the States, which are as impracticable as they are unconstitutional, and which if persevered in must and will end…

Would not a sectional decision producing such result by a majority of votes, either Northern or Southern, of necessity drive out the oppressed and aggrieved minority and place in presence of each other two irreconcilably hostile…

And if either extreme carry its point, what is that so far forth but dissolution of the Union?

On the contrary, they disappear before the intelligence and patriotism of the people, exerting through the ballot box their peaceful and silent but irresistible power.

When before was it imagined by sensible men that a regulative or declarative statute, whether enacted ten or forty years ago, is irrepealable; that an act of Congress is above the Constitution?

Never was objection more utterly destitute of substantial justification.

It was attacked with violence on the false or delusive pretext that it constituted a breach of faith.

These restrictions were, in the estimation of many thoughtful men, null from the beginning, unauthorized by the Constitution, contrary to the treaty stipulations for the cession of Louisiana, and inconsistent with the equality of these…

But the true principle of leaving each State and Territory to regulate its own laws of labor according to its own sense of right and expediency had acquired fast hold of the public judgment, to such a degree that by common consent it was…

Once more the Constitution and the Union triumphed signally.

But the patriotic impulses of the popular heart, guided by the admonitory advice of the Father of his Country, rose superior to all the difficulties of the incorporation of a new empire into the Union.

Who does not appreciate the incalculable benefits of the acquisition of Louisiana?

Who would rejoice to hail Texas as a lone star instead of one in the galaxy of States?

Who would wish to see Florida still a European colony?

In all this, if any aggression there were, any innovation upon preexisting rights, to which portion of the Union are they justly chargeable?

It was in truth the great event which, by completing for us the possession of the Valley of the Mississippi, with commercial access to the Gulf of Mexico, imparted unity and strength to the whole Confederation and attached together by…

The patriotic and just men who participated in the act were influenced by motives far above all sectional jealousies.