He had become a leader of energy and courage; and, although destined for many years to lead a divided and often a defeated organisation, he was ever after recognised as the most gifted and notable member of his party.

He was a serious, simple-hearted, wise man, well fitted for governor.

But, as a politician, he was as false as his capacity would allow him to be, having no hesitation, either from principle or fear, to say or do anything that served his purpose.

He had associated with scholars and thinkers, and in the estimation of his contemporaries there were few stronger or clearer intellects in the State.

In the Free-soil secession of 1847, he proclaimed uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery, and he never changed his position until death ended his gallant and noble service in the Civil War.

He believed in normal schools and in district school libraries, and he may properly be called one of the founders of the educational system of the State.

Many people who never saw him were strongly attracted to him by sympathy of political opinions and by gratitude for important services rendered the country.

They have withstood the seduction of the seducers, and are like a rock in the defence of the right.

He waited to be called to an office, but he did not wait to be called to join a movement which would be helpful to the public.

These brothers brought to the service of the people a perfect integrity, coupled with a gracious urbanity that kept them in public life longer than either desired to remain.

The pulpit became a platform, and the great editors spoke as well as wrote.

Another tie which has heretofore held our country together has been disbanded, and from its ruins has sprung a political organisation trusting for its success to sectional prejudices.

It excludes from its councils the people of nearly one-half of the Union; it seeks a triumph over one-half our country.

The battlefields of Yorktown, of Camden, of New Orleans, are unrepresented in their conventions; and no delegates speak for the States where rest the remains of Washington, Jefferson, Marion, Sumter, or Morgan, or of the later hero…

They cherish more bitter hatred of their own countrymen than they have ever shown towards the enemies of our land.

To him, the struggle for freedom in Kansas was not less glorious than the heroic resistance in 1776, and he made it vivid by the use of historic associations.

Not sweeter are the flowers that make your valley fair, not greener are the pines that give your valley its name, than the memory of the brave men who died for freedom.

And yet no victim of those days, sleeping under the green sod, is more truly a martyr of Liberty than every murdered man whose bones lie bleaching in this summer sun upon the silent plains of Kansas.

Twenty millions of a moral people, politically dedicated to Liberty, are asking themselves whether their government shall be administered solely in the interest of three hundred and fifty thousand slave-holders." He did not believe that…

He was of a most gracious and sweet nature, and, although he never flinched from uttering or maintaining his opinions, he was a lover and maker of peace.

It was an easy and plausible way of settling the slavery question, and one which commended itself to those who wished it settled by the Democratic party.

The intense earnestness of purpose, the marvellous power of rapidly absorbing knowledge, the quickness of wit, and the firmness which Cato never surpassed, marked him then, as afterward upon the floor of Congress, a mighty power amidst…

They who think it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case altogether.

It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a free labour nation.

The absence of violent democratic innovations was the Constitution's remarkable feature.