The colonists were struggling not only against the armies of a great nation, but against the settled opinions of mankind; for the world did not then believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely intrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves. We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of States, was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a National Union, founded directly upon the will of the people, endowed with full power of self-preservation and ample authority for the accomplishment of its great object.

Fellow-Citizens: We stand to-day upon an eminence which overlooks a hundred years of national life - a century crowded with perils, but crowned with the triump…

Under this Constitution the boundaries of freedom have been enlarged, the foundations of order and peace have been strengthened, and the growth of our people i…

He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies of the government. For twenty-five years he has trodden the perilous heights of public du…

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we sh…

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests…

The demands of a free populace, too, are very seldom harmful to liberty, for they are due either to the populace being oppressed or to the suspicious that it i…