"If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other,...the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint." -- John Quincy Adams
"(America) was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right to do so." -- Alexis de Tocqueville
"Whenever Northern and Southern prejudices have come into conflict, the latter have been sacrificed, and the former soothed. Monarchical Federalists, employing the government as a stepping-stone to monarchy, brought all this about by adopting constructions of the Constitution that they had promised would never occur in their earlier arguments supporting that document's acceptance." --Thomas Jefferson
"To coerce a State would be more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts." --James Madison
"To coerce a State would be one of the maddest projects ever devised: no State would ever suffer itself to be used as the instrument of coercing another." --Alexander Hamilton
If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption. -- Thomas Jefferson
"Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1796.
"Force cannot change right." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.
"Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier, and proportionally facilitate the accomplishment of their emancipation by dividing the burden on a greater number of coadjutors." --Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, 1820.
"The future inhabitants of {both} the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better." --Thomas Jefferson
"A balance of power between two combinations of states, and not the existence of slavery, gave rise to this unfortunate, and absurd controversy. Banking, funding, and tariff interests united to beget the Missouri project, and that project begat the idea of using slavery as an instrument for effecting a balance of power." --John Taylor of Caroline, 1753-1824 decentralist political thinker, lawyer, planter, legislator
"If [Northerners]succeed in clutching the lands in all the new States hereafter to be made--which I take to be the whole secret of [their] exuberance and ostensible humanity about our Negroes--who can say how soon we may expect a Crusade against the slaveholding states to divest us of every remaining right which interfere in the smallest degree with their views?" --James Mercer Garnett (1770-1843) Virginia senator, agricultural reformer
"It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country...who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every state has a right to withdraw. " -- Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
"The contest is really for empire on the side of the North and for independence on that of the South." -- London Times, 7 November 1861
"I do not know what the Union would be worth if saved by the sword." -- Senator William H. Seward
"Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?" --Thomas Paine
"The United States has the right, and ... the ... power, to penetrate to every part of the national domain…. We will remove and destroy every obstacle - if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper." -- Gen. W. T. Sherman
"The more Indians we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed next year, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers." -- Gen. W.T. Sherman
"Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong." -- Adolf Hitler
"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." -- Adolf Hitler
"Who says I am not under the special protection of God?" -- Adolf Hitler
"People separated from their history are easily persuaded." -- Karl Marx
'My country, right or wrong,' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, 'My mother, drunk or sober.' -- G. K. Chesterton
"...a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense." -- John Adams (1735 - 1826), (Diary, 1786)
British Historical Document, "Proclamation of Rebellion," 23 August 1775 Occasion: A proclamation by the King in response to the increasing hostilities in the American colonies.
Proclamation of Rebellion
Whereas many of our subjects in divers parts of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, misled by dangerous and ill designing men, and forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power that has protected and supported them; after various disorderly acts committed in disturbance of the publick peace, to the obstruction of lawful commerce, and to the oppression of our loyal subjects carrying on the same; have at length proceeded to open an avowed rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile manner, to withstand the execution of the law, and traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us: And whereas, there is reason to apprehend that such rebellion hath been much promoted and encouraged by the traitorous correspondence, counsels and comfort of diverse wicked and desperate persons within this realm: To the end therefore, that none of our subjects may neglect or violate their duty through ignorance thereof, or through any doubt of the protection which the law will afford to their loyalty and zeal, we have thought fit, by and with the advice of our Privy Council, to issue our Royal Proclamation, hereby declaring, that not only all our Officers, civil and military, are obliged to exert their utmost endeavours to suppress such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice, but that all our subjects of this Realm, and the dominions thereunto belonging, are bound by law to be aiding and assisting in the suppression of such rebellion, and to disclose and make known all traitorous conspiracies and attempts against us our crown and dignity; and we do accordingly strictly charge and command all our Officers, as well civil as military, and all others our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion, and to disclose and make known all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which they shall know to be against us, our crown and dignity; and for that purpose, that they transmit to one of our principal Secretaries of State, or other proper officer, due and full information of all persons who shall be found carrying on correspondence with, or in any manner or degree aiding or abetting the persons now in open arms and rebellion against our Government, within any of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, in order to bring to condign punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abetters of such traitorous designs.
Given at our Court at St. James's the twenty-third day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, in the fifteenth year of our reign.
GOD save the KING.
[Down right Lincolnian, ain't it?]
"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand." -- General Robert E. Lee, CSA