Franklin Pierce

With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.

After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

In the best farce today we start with some absurd premise as to character or situation, but if the premises be once granted we move logically enough to the ending.

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.