Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety.

Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.

If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States.

The law: it has honored us; may we honor it.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? ... A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people.