I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find the white man, you see everything around him improving.

I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation.

There is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man's face and another behind his back.

My heart bleeds at the death of every one of our gallant men.

Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.

Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South, I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State?

My trust is in the mercy and wisdom of a kind Providence, who ordereth all things for our good.