Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness.

Conscription is the vitality of a nation, the purification of its morality, and the real foundations of all its habits.

The propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.

No nation can rise to its full moral maturity so long as it subjects a segment of its citizenry on the basis of race or color.