The day that the balance between the two sections of the country - the slaveholding States and the non-slaveholding States - is destroyed is a day that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster.
A Trump presidency will plunge the United States into an era of unknowns that has little parallel in the nation's 240-year history.
There are some people bent on blowing up the situation in the country. I call them the fifth column. They are not an opposition. They want to stage a rebellion in the country. Their dream is to topple the government and overthrow the president.
I very much regret, in appearing before you at your request, to address you on the present state of the country, and the prospect before us, that I can bring you no good tidings.
National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.
Washington is too small to be a nation but too large to be an insane asylum.
The same expression was used 124 years earlier referring to South Carolina. See James Louis Petigru.
To subdivide this land into two unstable, insecure nations, to try to defend what is indefensible, is to invite disaster. Carving Judea and Samaria out of Israel means carving up Israel.
No-one can say when the unwinding began, when the coil that held America together in its secure and sometime shifting grip first gave way.