William Seward: “By the blessing of the Author of those rights, they have prevailed over all opposition, and form the basis of thirteen…”

The recital of heroic actions loses its chief value, if we cannot discover the principles in which they were born.

That freedom and that security required that the nations of Europe should relax their grasp on the American Continent.

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.

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.