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

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

But I deny that the Constitution recognizes property in man.

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.

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.

The right to have a slave implies the right in some one to make the slave; that right must be equal and mutual, and this would resolve society into a state of perpetual war.

It would be contrary to the spirit of the American Government to use force to subjugate the South.