My judgment is that neither House of Congress, nor both combined, have any right to interfere in the count. It is for the Vice-President to do it all.... There should be no compromise of our Constitutional rights.

The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.

If a liberal policy towards the late Rebels is adopted, the ultra Republicans are opposed to it; if the colored people are honored, the extremists of the other wing cry out against it. I suspect I am right in both cases.

No person connected with me by blood or marriage will be appointed to office.

[T]his free and easy old-bachelor sort of life is quite full of fun and jollity. Pease and myself room together; and everything like order and neatness is banished from our presence as a nuisance--old letters and old boots and shoes, duds clean and duds dirty, books and newspapers, tooth-brushes, shoe-brushes, and clothes-brushes, all heaped together on chairs, settees, etc., in dusty and "most admired confusion." Now, what is there imaginable in clean, tidy private life equal to this?

Free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands, and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age.

Last evening attended Croghan Lodge International Order of Odd Fellows. Election of officers. Chosen Noble Grand. These social organizations have a number of good results. All who attend are educated in self-government. This in a marked way. They bind society together. The well-to-do and the poor should be brought together as much as possible. The separation into classes--castes--is our danger. It is the danger of all civilizations.