I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

This is essentially a people's contest... whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men - to lift artificial weights from all shoulders - to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all - to afford all, an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.

We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under God, I hope it never will until that time.

I am an optimist because I don't see the point in being anything else.

Achievement has no color

So plain that no one, high or low, ever does mistake it, except in a plainly selfish way; for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself.

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'