The freedom of a government does not depend on the quality of its laws, but upon the power that has the right to create them.

The whole fabric of southern society must be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost. Without this, this government can never be, as it never has been, a true republic.

No government can be free that does not allow all its citizens to participate in the formation and execution of her laws.

There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion; in the bloody religions of the heathen.

I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians - however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash, and the cries of his tortured victims.

The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.

The freedom of a government does not depend on the quality of its laws, but upon the power that has the right to create them.