Quotes from Chris DeRose

I can never consent to being dictated to as to what I shall or shall not do. I, as President, shall be responsible for my administration.

Tyler introduced a measure to radically alter the Senate, requiring a majority of slave state senators before any action could be taken; for a majority of slave state senators to remove any officer of the executive branch; and for a method for states to formally leave the Union.

The Confederate States of America were now twice the size of any nation in Europe (Russia excepted), made up of nine million people, including three and a half million slaves. As General Beauregard put it, "No people ever warred for independence with more relative advantages than the Confederates," citing the well-organized central government, existing state governments, mountains, rivers, and other natural defenses.

Beginning with Van Buren himself, the heirs to Jackson saw the role of president as conciliator-in-chief, containing the elements that threatened the Union, often by concessions made to southern interests.

But a surprise victor in a bitterly divided presidential election, at the head of a new political party, would upset the old order of things, and redefine the nature of the presidency.

may have believed that a romantic marriage was strengthened by similitude. But he knew that a durable political marriage relied on disparate groups uniting.

By the end of his first year in office, Jackson was permanently estranged from Calhoun and had settled on Van Buren as his successor

The House censured Brooks, who resigned but was again elected, resuming his seat seven weeks after the attack. Every southern member of Congress, "without conspicuous exception," defended Brooks, who had beaten a trapped, unarmed man with a cane until it broke, and nearly killed him. Sumner would be incapacitated for three years, but re-elected by the Massachusetts legislature despite his absence.

The Texas declaration clauses read: "We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

We shall again be able not to declare, that 'all States as States, are equal,' nor yet that 'all citizens as citizens are equal,' but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more, that 'all men are created equal.

Throughout his life, honors he had sought, honors he had not sought, were his, often at a younger age than anyone before him. Now, when he needed his magic the most, he was despised, abandoned, isolated, and utterly unable to control events around him, the first and only elected president in American history to be denied re-nomination by his own party. The last redoubt of Pierce supporters may have been within his own cabinet, the only one to remain intact over a four-year term.