The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.

The whole hope of human progress is suspended on the ever-growing influence of the Bible.

There is a higher law than the Constitution.

But the Constitution was made not only for southern and northern states, but for states neither northern nor southern, namely, the western states, their coming in being foreseen and provided for.

We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them, and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.

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

There is not only no free state which would now establish it, but there is no slave state, which, if it had had the free alternative as we now have, would have founded slavery.