If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's.

Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom a slaughter-house.

Tobacco is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness.

We are now vibrating between too much and too little government, and the pendulum will rest finally in the middle.

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.

Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known.

The rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.