Richmond, Virginia, Enquirer Quotes

No solid South, no solid North, save when solid for the flag and the Union.

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle—field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The constitution is the supreme law; the Supreme Court is the authorized interpreter of the constitution; the construction which that tribunal puts upon that instrument is, for all practical purposes, the constitution itself, and therefore their decision must be fully and freely acquiesced in by all good citizens. That decision is now the supreme law of the land; it is practically the constitution itself, being the meaning and intent of that instrument as officially interpreted and declared by the tribunal authorized to interpret it, and from whose decision there is no appeal. Resistance to that decision is, therefore, resistance to the constitution -- to the government -- to the Union itself. It cannot be made legally rightfully, peacefully, or with the least chance or hope of success. That decision must be carried into effect -- that interpretation must be acquiesced in and acted upon, or else it must be resisted by force. There is no other alternative. It is the law, the constitution, and will be respected and acted upon by the constituted authorities, no matter to what party they belong nor what their private views may be in regard to it. It cannot be evaded; if Congress and the President should undertake to resist it, the effort would be futile. In a word, we repeat, nothing but force, open rebellion, can successfully oppose the practical application and enforcement of the decision of the court in this case.

I know and see every day the extent of geographical feeling, and the necessity of feeling if we mean to preserve and invigorate the Union.

Mr. Lincoln is the next President. We must try to save the Union. I will go South.

Our Federal Union! It must and shall be preserved.

The only safety of the South from abolition universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the Union

Abolition—Yes! abolish everything on the face of the earth but this Union; free every slave—slay every traitor—burn every rebel mansion, if these things be necessary to preserve this temple of freedom to the world and to our posterity.

The heart of the People, North and South, is for the Union.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance.

The Union, which can alone insure internal peace, and external security to each State, Must and Shall be Preserved, cost what it may in time, treasure, and blood.

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was preserved.

Five of its nine silk gowns are worn by Slaveholders. More than half its long Bench is filled with Slaveholders. Its Chief Justice is a Slaveholder. The Free States with double the population of the Slave State, do not have half the Judges. The majority represent a minority of 350,000. The minority represent a majority of twenty Millions!

The Supreme Court of the United States, in a recent case, has, by a decision of seven to two of the Judges, established as law what our Southern statesmen have been repeating daily for many years on the floors of Congress, that the whole action of this Government on the subject of slavery, for more than a quarter of a century, from the initiation of the Missouri Restriction in 1822, to the California Compromise in 1850, has been all beyond the limits of the Constitution; was without justifiable authority; and that the whole mass should be now proclaimed null and void, and that slavery is guaranteed by the constitutional compact.

The importance of this decision in the highest legal tribunal established under our Federal Constitution is a sufficient reason for devoting to it so much of the space in our columns. The questions upon which these opinions have been rendered are among those which have shaken our Union from centre to circumference, and threatened imminently its dissolution. The points adjudicated are more strictly political than legal, and affect materially the status of political parties throughout the confederacy…. The importance of the decision is greatly enhanced by its immediate effect upon two of the great political parties of the country. At a single blow it shatters and destroys the platform of the Republican party. It annihilates the issue which was made paramount in the recent Presidential election, and takes away from the Democratic party all the advantages of its advocacy of popular sovereignty in the Territories. It leaves both of these great parties all abroad, without a single plank of their late platforms upon which to rest.

The supreme court of the United States, the highest and most dignified tribunal in any civilized country, and composed of the very first order of talent in the world, and to whose decisions it is an honor to bow with respectful deference, have had the darling bantling of black republicanism under consideration, and announce it illegitimate. They say it is the offspring of red hot abolitionism, and cannot be acknowledged as having anything honest or upright about it. Thus it is thrown upon the hands of the black republicans who are compelled to provide for it.

Believe me, then, that the great mass of the people of the North do not uphold the Administration on the principle of abolishing slavery, but that the restoration of the Union is the grand incentive; and while such is the fact, every nerve and every sinew will be strained to bring about a victorious end.--Would to Heaven that the blood already spilled was a sufficient sacrifice for this great result.

My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy Slavery. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

Whereas, serious and alarming dissensions have arisen between the Northern and Southern States, concerning the rights and security of the rights of the slaveholding States, and especially their rights in the common territory of the United States; and whereas it is eminently desirable and proper that these dissensions, which now threaten the very existence of this Union, should be permanently quieted and settled by constitutional provisions, which shall do equal justice to all sections, and thereby restore to the people that peace and good will which ought to prevail between all the citizens of the United States: Therefore,…

These are solemn times. It is not a struggle for national salvation; for the nation, as such, seems doomed beyond recovery. The reason why the South rules, and the North falls prostrate in servile terror, is simply this: With the South, the preservation of Slavery is paramount to all other considerations--above party success, denominational unity, pecuniary interest, legal integrity, and constitutional obligation. With the North, the preservation of the Union is placed above all other things--above honor, justice, freedom, integrity of soul, the Decalogue and the Golden Rule--the Infinite God himself. All these she is ready to discard for the Union.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure half slave and half free.

Any Union man, travelling in either of these two States [North & South Carolina], must expect to hear many very insulting words; and any Northern man is sure to find his principles despised, his people condemned, and himself subjected to much disagreeable continually. There is everywhere extreme sensitiveness concerning the negro and his relations; and I neither found nor learned of any village, town, or city in which it would be safe for a man to express freely what are here, in the North, called very moderate views on that subject.

Patriotism, as the South understood it, meant devotion to one's State, and only a secondary and consequential devotion to the Union, existing as a result of the State's action in making itself a part of the Union, and terminable at any time by the State's withdrawal.

It is the desire of the good people of the whole country that sectionalism as a factor in our politics should disappear...