Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled, the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains, its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.

The people themselves, and not their servants, can safely reverse their own deliberate decisions.

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

I intend no modification of my oft-expressed wish that all men everywhere could be free.

I think that if anything can be proved by natural theology, it is that slavery is morally wrong. God gave man a mouth to receive bread, hands to feed it, and his hand has a right to carry bread to his mouth without controversy.

My old father used to have a saying: If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter.

The US patent system adds the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery and production of new and useful things