A restitution of the Union has been rendered forever impossible.

Lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to make your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished—a reunited country.

Governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.

The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.

Tradition usually rests upon something which men did know; history is often the manufacture of the mere liar.

African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing.

My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.