If you have given up your militia, and Congress shall refuse to arm them, you have lost every thing. Your existence will be precarious, because you depend on others, whose interests are not affected by your infelicity.

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.

Fear is the passion of slaves.

....I am sure that the dangers of this system (the Federal Constitution) are real, when those who have no similar interest with the people of this country (the South) are to legislate for us - when our dearest rights are to be left, in the hands of those, whose advantage it will be to infringe them.

It is natural to man to indulge in the illusion of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, till she transforms us into beasts.

Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom.