William Seward: “If we have rules we had better either obey them or burn them.”

For the rest, the work of emancipation abides the action, whether it be slow or fast, of the moral sense of the American people.

Let it be remembered, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of America, that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature.

But power, confessedly derived from the people, must be exercised in obedience to their will, and must be resigned to them again, at least in death.

Stoicism, that had no charity for error, never converted any human society to virtue; Christianity, that remembers the true nature of man, has encompassed a large portion of the globe.