So far as laws and institutions avail, men should have equality of opportunity for happiness; that is, of education, wealth, power. These make happiness secure. An equal diffusion of happiness so far as laws and institutions avail.

Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.

No political party can ever make prohibition effective. A political party implies an adverse, an opposing, political party. To enforce criminal statutes implies substantial unanimity in the community. This is the result of the jury system. Hence the futility of party prohibition.

In Sumter and other counties [in South Carolina] the whites are resorting to intimidation and violence to prevent the colored people from organizing for the elections. The division there is still on the color line. Substantially all the whites are Democrats and all the colored people are Republicans. There is no political principle in dispute between them. The whites have the intelligence, the property, and the courage which make power. The negroes are for the most part ignorant, poor, and timid. My view is that the whites must be divided there before a better state of things will prevail.

It is now true that this is God's Country, if equal rights-a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life are everywhere secured to all.

My father and mother in 1817 were forty-nine days on the road with their emigrant wagons [from Vermont] to Ohio. More than two days for each hour that I spent in the same journey.

While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue,I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.