I mean to say that Congress can hereafter decide whether any states, slave or free, can be framed out of Texas. If they should never be framed out of Texas, they never could be admitted.

Simultaneously with the establishment of the Constitution, Virginia ceded to the United States her domain, which then extended to the Mississippi, and was even claimed to extend to the Pacific Ocean.

The proposition of an established classification of states as slave states and free states, as insisted on by some, and into northern and southern, as maintained by others, seems to me purely imaginary, and of course the supposed equilibrium of those classes a mere conceit.

No man will ever be President of the United States who spells 'negro' with two gs.

The two systems slave and free-labor are incompatible. They have never permanently existed together in one country, and they never can.

There is a higher law than the Constitution.

Sir, there is no Christian nation, thus free to choose as we are, which would establish slavery.