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.

Although I could lament in the language and feelings of David for Absalom, I am constrained to say, peace to his manes. Let us weep for the living, and not for the dead.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another.

I could not do otherwise without transcending the limits prescribed by the Constitution for the President and without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion nowadays enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.

Private property is held sacred in all good governments, and particularly in our own. Yet shall the fear of invading it prevent a general from marching his army over a cornfield or burning a house which protects the enemy? A thousand other instances might be cited to show that laws must sometimes be silent when necessity speaks.

The Constitution and the laws are supreme and the Union indissoluble.

Every man is equally entitled to protection by law. But when the laws undertake to add... artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges—to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful— the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers, who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.