If I am to be shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet.

I feel incompetent to perform duties...which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me.

There are no good laws but such as repeal other laws.

I tell our sisters in the South that so far as Tennessee is concerned she will not be dragged into a Southern or any other confederacy until she has had time to consider; and then she will go when she believes it to be her interest, and not before.

Duties have been mine; consequences are God's.

Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.

I have reached the summit of my ambition.