William Seward: “The very exertions of its supporters to perpetuate wrong, will but hasten its death.”

But, were the breath which now gives utterance to my feelings the last vital air I should draw, my expiring words to you and your children should be, Independence and Union forever!

There are events, the monuments of which, surviving every other memorial of human existence, eternize the nation to whose history they belong, after all other vestiges of its glory have disappeared from the globe.

But the people of France, shut up in darkness during centuries of misrule, passed at a step from abject servitude to unlimited freedom.

From whatever cause war between other nations, whether foreign or domestic, has arisen, the unvarying law of the United States has been peace with both belligerents.