“I shudder when I think of the calamities which slavery is likely to produce in this country. You would think me mad if I were to describe my anticipations.… If the gangrene is not stopped I can see nothing but insurrection of the blacks against the whites.”
—JOHN ADAMS
“Slavery in a moral sense is an evil; but as connected with commerce it has important uses.”
—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
“The discussion of emancipation in the non-slaveholding states is equally injurious to the slaves and their masters and… has no sanction in the principles of the constitution.”
—WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
“The agitation of the slavery question is mischievous and wicked, and proceeds from no patriotic motive by its authors.”
—JAMES K. POLK
“So far as slavery is concerned, we of the South must throw ourselves on the Constitution and defend our rights under it to the last, and when arguments will no longer suffice, we will appeal to the sword, if necessary.”
—ZACHARY TAYLOR
“God knows I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, and give it such protection as is prescribed by the Constitution.”
—MILLARD FILLMORE
“It is admitted that domestic slavery exists here in its mildest form. That part of the population are bound together by friendship and the nearer relations of life. They are attached to the families in which they have lived from childhood. They are comfortably provided for, and apparently contented.”
—FRANKLIN PIERCE
“[T]he incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North, for the last quarter of a century, has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom.”
—JAMES BUCHANAN
“We profess to have no taste for running and catching niggers, at least, I profess no taste for that job at all. Why then do I yield support to a Fugitive Slave Law? Because I do not understand that the Constitution, which guarantees that right, can be supported without it.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN