[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.

All... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law.

The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.

No government can continue good, but under the control of the people.

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.