Letter to his son http://radgeek.com/gt/2005/01/03/robert-e-Lee-owned-slaves-and-defended-slavery/, G. W. Custis Lee (23 January 1861). <br class="br">1860s <br class="br">Context: I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual Union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession: anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and all the other patriots of the Revolution. … Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defense will draw my sword on none.
“There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
Confession of Faith Speech, Progressive National Convention, Chicago http://www.bartleby.com/55/5.html (6 August 1912) <br class="br">1910s
Sax Rohmer (1883–1959) English novelist
The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext94/fuman12.txt (1920), ch. ix
“Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure.”
Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist
Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician
"Lord Bacon", (1837) in Essays 2:183
Attributed
John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)
Diary entry (1820), as quoted in The Diary of John Quincy Adams (1951), by John Quincy Adams, Scribner's Sons, New York, p. 228-229 http://web.archive.org/web/20130703084250/http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps6.htm
“I shudder when I think of the calamities which slavery is likely to produce in this country.”
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
1820, as quoted in John Adams https://web.archive.org/web/20111029143754/http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps2.htm, by Page Smith, Doubleday, Garden City, New York <br class="br">1820s <br class="br">Context: I shudder when I think of the calamities which slavery is likely to produce in this country. You would think me mad if I were to describe my anticipations… If the gangrene is not stopped I can see nothing but insurrection of the blacks against the whites.
Josiah Quincy III (1772–1864) American politician
Regarding the admission of Orleans Territory as a U.S. State. Abridged Cong. Debates, Jan. 14, 1811. Vol. iv. p. 327. This was later famously paraphrased by Henry Clay: The gentleman [Mr. Quincy] cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." Speech, Jan. 8, 1813.
