The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.

We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.

[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil.

All power in human hands is liable to be abused.