The panic of 1837 reached the proportions of a national calamity.

But, gradually, the country recognised that the prosperity of a nation is not increased in proportion to the quantity of paper money issued, unless such currency be maintained at its full value, convertible, at pleasure, into hard…

Thus, the citizens of New York, staggering under a panic common to the whole country, were compelled to suffer the additional hardships of an irredeemable, and, for the most part, worthless currency, known as "shin-plasters.

But the suffering people were angry, and, like a whirlwind, the Whigs swept nearly every county in the State.

Experience had taught them to act upon their own convictions.

He believed in taking advantage of every opportunity to strengthen his own party and weaken the adversary, and he troubled himself little about the means employed.

But, at the bottom of his nature, there was bed-rock principle from which no pressure could swerve him.

He asked no office, and he gave only the ripe fruit of his meditative life.

He hated slavery and all its belongings, though a seeming necessity constrained him to write, in 1838, to this intensely pro-slavery city, a pro-slavery letter, which was at war with his real, or at least with his subsequent convictions.

Thank God, I can endure it as long as they, but I am sick of our Whig party.

He cared little for the boys about town and less for the sports of youth; he could dispense with sleep, and wasted no time thinking about what he should eat or wear; but books, and especially newspapers, were read with the avidity that a…

He seemed to have only one ambition--the acquisition of knowledge and the career of a man of letters, and in his efforts to succeed, he ignored forms and social usages, forgot that he had a physical body to care for, and detested…

It is one of the privileges of genius to discern the genius of others; but even Thurlow Weed could not have dreamed that he was giving opportunity to a man whose name was to rank higher than his own in history.

He lacked judgment, and at times greatly grieved the friends who were willing to follow him through fire and flood; but once his mind was made up he surrendered his understanding, his consciousness of convictions, of duty, and of public…

As the editor of the Jeffersonian, which now quickly won a multitude of readers, he did his work with marked ability, discussing measures calmly and forcibly, and with an influence that baffled his opponents and surprised his friends.

If this proceeding is approved by the government and sanctioned by the people, it is not merely a step toward revolution, it is revolution; it will not only lead to military despotism, it establishes military despotism.

Having given it a generous support in the conduct of the war, we now pause to see what kind of government it is for which we are asked to pour out our blood and our treasure.

I was slow to adopt the strong measures which by degrees I have been forced to regard as being within the exceptions of the Constitution and as indispensable to the public safety....

I think the time not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many....

Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?

We only ask freedom of speech,--the right to exercise all the franchises conferred by the Constitution upon an American.

We can, if we will, avert all these disasters and evoke a blessing.

Or shall we do as our fathers did under circumstances of like trial, when they battled against the powers of a crown?

Will they now believe that defiance of law in the rulers breeds defiance of law in the people?

In the minds of the American people the duty of obedience and the rights to protection are inseparable.