"My province is to execute and not to make the laws."
"I therefore appeal through you to the people of the country to declare in their might that the Union must and shall be preserved by all constitutional means."
"The national flag has floated in glory over every sea."
"In all its various bearings, therefore, I commend the question to Congress as the only human tribunal under Providence possessing the power to meet the existing emergency."
"Entertaining this conviction, I refrained even from sending reenforcements to Major Anderson, who commanded the forts in Charleston Harbor, until an absolute necessity for doing so should make itself ..."
"Under its shadow American citizens have found protection and respect in all lands beneath the sun."
"The Union is a sacred trust left by our Revolutionary fathers to their descendants, and never did any other people inherit so rich a legacy."
"My opinion remains unchanged that justice as well as sound policy requires us still to seek a peaceful solution of the questions at issue between the North and the South."
"I possess no dispensing power."
"I certainly had no right to make aggressive war upon any State, and I am perfectly satisfied that the Constitution has wisely withheld that power even from Congress."
"It has rendered us prosperous in peace and triumphant in war."