The homestead policy was established only after long and earnest resistance; experience proves its wisdom. The lands in the hands of industrious settlers, whose labor creates wealth and contributes to the public resources, are worth more to the United States than if they had been reserved as a solitude for future purchasers.

Legislation can neither be wise nor just which seeks the welfare of a single interest at the expense and to the injury of many and varied interests.

Honest conviction is my courage; the Constitution is my guide.

Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigorously, more vigorously, and more severely, than by one.

I never thought I would be impeached.

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.

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