The laws of certain states . . . give an ownership in the service of Negroes as personal property . . . . But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty - and when the captor in war . . . thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.

Hence, in a state of nature, no man had any moral power to deprive another of his life, limbs, property, or liberty; nor the least authority to command or exact obedience from him, except that which arose from the ties of consanguinity.

A nation has a right to manage its own concerns as it thinks fit.

I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations.

Perhaps myself the first, at some expense of popularity, to unfold the true character of Jefferson, it is too late for me to become his apologist. Nor can I have any disposition to do it. I admit that his politics are tinctured with fanaticism, that he is too much in earnest in his democracy, that he has been a mischievous enemy to the principle measures of our past administration, that he is crafty & persevering in his objects, that he is not scrupulous about the means of success, nor very mindful of truth, and that he is a contemptible hypocrite.

To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.