"There is a higher law than the Constitution which regulates our authority over the domain. Slavery must be abolished, and we must do it."--Wm. H. Seward. "The time is fast approaching when the cry will become too overpowering to resist. Rather than tolerate national slavery as it now exists, let the Union be dissolved at once, and then the sin of slavery will rest where it belongs."--N. Y. Tribune.
"The Union is a lie. The American Union is an imposture, a covenant with death and an agreement with hell. We are for its overthrow! Up with the flag of disunion, that we may have a free and glorious republic of our own."--William Lloyd Garrison.
"I look forward to the day when there shall be a servile insurrection in the South; when the black man, armed with British bayonets, and led on by British officers, shall assert his freedom and wage a war of extermination against his master. And, though we may not mock at their calamity nor laugh when their fear cometh, yet we will hail it as the dawn of a political millennium."--Joshua R. Giddings.
"In the alternative being presented of the continuance of slavery or a dissolution of the Union, we are for a dissolution, and we care not how quick it comes."--Rufus P. Spaulding.
"The fugitive-slave act is filled with horror--we are bound to disobey this act."--Charles Sumner.
"The Advertiser has no hesitation in saying that it does not hold to the faithful observance of the fugitive-slave law of 1850."--Portland Advertiser.
"I have no doubt but the free and slave states ought to be separated .... The Union is not worth supporting in connection with the South."--Horace Greeley.
"The times demand and we must have an anti-slavery Constitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-slavery God."--Anson P. Burlingame.
"There is merit in the Republican party. It is this: It is the first sectional party ever organized in this country .... It is not national, it is sectional. It is the North arrayed against the South.... The first crack in the iceberg is visible; you will yet hear it go with a crack through the center "--Wendell Phillips.
"The cure for slavery prescribed by Redpath is the only infallible remedy, and men must foment insurrection among the slaves in order to cure the evils. It can never be done by concessions and compromises. It is a great evil, and must be extinguished by still greater ones. It is positive and imperious in its approaches, and must be overcome with equally positive forces. You must commit an assault to arrest a burglar, and slavery is not arrested without a violation of law and the cry of fire."--Independent Democrat, leading Republican paper in New Hampshire.
