Required to be constantly recumbent I write slowly and with difficulty.... Weakened in body by infirmities and in mind by age, now far gone into my 83rd year, reading one newspaper only and forgetting immediately what I read.

The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.

Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling; for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.

Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author

I hope the terms of Excellency, Honor, Worship, Esquire, forever disappear from among us... I wish that of Mr. would follow them.