Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression.

We must ever mandate the principle that the people of this continent alone have the right to decide their own destiny.

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress than I had any conception of, before I became President of the U.S.

The Constitution itself, plainly written as it is, the safeguard of our federative compact, the offspring of concession and compromise, binding together in the bonds of peace and union this great and increasing family of free and independent States, will be the chart by which I shall be directed.

I cannot, whilst President of the United States, descend to enter into a newspaper controversy.

General Taylor is, I have no doubt, a well-meaning old man. He is, however, uneducated, exceedingly ignorant of public affairs, and I should judge, of very ordinary capacity.

If a man . . . would shake and not be shaken, grip and not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as it squeezed him, then he suffered no inconvenience from it.