Quotes from Salmon P. Chase

The way to resumption is to resume.

A resignation is a grave act; never performed by a right-minded man without forethought or with reserve.

What you have said, Mr. President, fully satisfies me that you have given to every proposition which has been made, a kind and candid consideration. And you have now expressed the conclusion to which you have arrived, clearly and distinctly.

The Proclamation does not, indeed, mark out exactly the course I should myself prefer. But I am ready to take it just as it is written, and to stand by it with all my heart.

The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.

All men are born equally free.

I made this resolution today. I will try to excel in all things yet if I am excelled, without fault of mine, I will not be mortified. I will not withhold from any one the praise which I think his due; nor will I allow myself to envy another's praise or to feel jealousy when I hear him praised. May God help me to keep it.

What a vale of misery this world is! To me it has been emphatically so. Death has pursued me incessantly ever since I was twenty-five. My path has been—how terribly true it is—through the region of his shadow. Sometimes I feel as if I could give up—as if I must give up. And then after all I rise and press on.

I never refused my help to any person black or white; and I liked the office nonetheless because there were neither fees nor salary connected with it.

How wrong it is for those who love, not to express their love.

No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of all mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property.

All men are born equally free.

The Constitution in all its provisions looks to an indestructible union disposed of indestructible States.

What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?

Once I should have been, if not satisfied, partially, at least, contented with suffrage for the intelligent and those who have been soldiers; now I am convinced that universal suffrage is demanded by sound policy and impartial justice.

The child is pronounced pretty. I think it quite otherwise.

The President then proceeded to read his Emancipation Proclamation, making remarks on the several parts as he went on, and showing that he had fully considered the whole subject, in all lights under which it had been presented to him.