I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.

England and the United States are natural allies, and should be the best of friends.

I have made it a rule of my life to trust a man long after other people gave him up, but I don't see how I can ever trust any human being again.

Everyone has his superstitions. One of mine has always been when I started to go anywhere, accomplished.

How do people come up with a date and a time to take life from another man? . . . Twelve white men say a black man must die, and another white man sets the date and time without consulting one black person. . . . They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime . . . . Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, We, us, white folks all, have decided it's time for you to die, because this is the convenient date and time.

In 1856...I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years.... I therefore voted for James Buchanan as President.

I know only two tunes: one of them is "Yankee Doodle" and the other isn't.