"I mean only in this form to express an earnest conviction that the court has departed from the familiar rule requiring, in the interpretation of constitutional provisions, that full effect be given to the intent with which they were adopted."—Mr. Justice Harlan.
"But no human power can subdue this rebellion without the use of the emancipation policy and every other policy calculated to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion. Freedom has given two hundred thousand men raised on Southern soil. It will give us more yet. Just so much it has subtracted from the enemy. . . . Let my enemies prove, to the contrary, that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to a restoration of the Union. I will abide the issue."—Lincoln.
"The adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution closed one great era in our politics. It marked the end forever of the system of human slavery and of the struggles that grew out of that system. These amendments have been conclusively adopted, and they have been accepted in good faith by all political organizations and the people of all sections. They close the chapter. They are and must be final. All parties hereafter must accept and stand upon them; and henceforth our politics are to turn upon questions of the present and the future, not upon those of the settled and final past."—Tilden.
"Principles, it has been said, have no modesty . Their nature is to rule, and they doggedly insist on the privilege. If they meet in their path with other principles which dispute their ascendency, they give battle instantly; for a principle never rests till it has conquered. Nor can it be otherwise. To reign is its life; if it reigns not it dies."—D'Aubigné.
"When, early in the war, General Frémont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When in March and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter."—Lincoln.
"You think you have power and impunity on your side; and I think that I have the truth and innocence on mine. It is a strange and tedious war, when violence attempts to vanquish truth. All the efforts of violence
5
