The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise.

The Slave must be made fit for his freedom by education and discipline, and thus made unfit for slavery. And as soon as he becomes unfit for slavery, the master will no longer desire to hold him as a slave.

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

God forbid that the day should ever come when to be true to my constituents is to be hostile to the Union.

The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only entered on a new and enlarged arena.

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.

A question settled by violence, or in disregard of law, must remain unsettled forever.