From the earliest ages of history to the present day there never have been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad... It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power.

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

Be good children, and we shall all meet in Heaven. I want to meet you all, white and black, in Heaven. Our Federal Union! It must be preserved! [Toast at a celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday, April 13 1830]

I carried $5000 when I went to Washington. I returned with barely $90 in our pockets.

Secession, like any other REVOLUTIONARY ACT, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms.

All who wish to hand down to their children that happy republican system bequeathed to them by their revolutionary fathers, must now take their stand against this consolidating, corrupting money power, and put it down, or their children will become hewers of wood and drawers of water to this aristocratic ragocracy.

That those tribes [the Sac and Fox Indians] cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizensis certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition.