“All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
If it ever reach us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”
“There is, even now, something of an ill omen among us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades this country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgement of courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the ministers of justice.”
“The lawless in spirit are encouraged to be lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint but dread of punishment, they become absolutely unrestrained. Having ever been regarded government as their deadliest bane, they make of jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much as its total annihilation.”
“Good men, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forbodes a change for the better, become tired of, and disgusted with, a government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocratic spirit, which all must admit is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any government may be broken down and destroyed – I mean the attachment of the people.
If the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.”
“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country; and never tolerate their violation by others.”
“It is to deny what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition will not continue to aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair. When such one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent to successfully frustrate his designs.”
“In history, we hope the powerful influence of the Revolution will be read of and recounted so long as the Bible shall be read. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes.
“But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were the pillars of the temple of Liberty; and now they have crumbled away. That temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.” – Abraham Lincoln: The Danger to Our Liberty, January 27, 1838; Annals Vol. 6, p. 424
