"The legal right of the Southern people to reclaim their fugitives I have constantly admitted. The legal right of Congress to interfere with their institution in the states, I have constantly denied."

"I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females)."

"Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected."

"I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay."

"'A living dog is better than a dead lion.' Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it."

"Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision."

"I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."

"If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?"

"It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones."