Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

Everything yields to diligence.

Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.

When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.