Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation continue together permanently - forever - half slave and half free?"
In all that people can do for themselves, government ought not to interfere.
You already know I desire that neither Father or Mother shall be in want of any comfort either in health or sickness while they live.
Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.
Bad promises are better broken than kept.
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.