My agency in promoting the passage of the National Banking Act was the greatest mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly which affects every interest in the country

Once I should have been, if not satisfied, partially, at least, contented with suffrage for the intelligent and those who have been soldiers; now I am convinced that universal suffrage is demanded by sound policy and impartial justice.

True Democracy makes no enquiry about the color of the skin, or the place of nativity. Wherever it sees a man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights

The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property.

All men are born equally free.

I never refused my help to any person black or white; and I liked the office nonetheless because there were neither fees nor salary connected with it.

What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?