[I]f the policy of the Government, upon vital questions affecting, the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their Government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal.

I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful.

We think slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the territories, where our votes will reach it.

It must now atone in blood for its complicity in wickedness.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, literally without education.

Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.