Constitutional law Quote by James Buchanan

It was one of the compromises of the Constitution that the slave property in the Southern States should be recognized as property throughout the…

— Jefferson Davis

But you answer, that the Constitution recognizes property in slaves. It would be sufficient, then, to reply, that this constitutional recognition must be void,…

— William H. Seward

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of property in a slave in not "distinctly and expressly affirmed" in it.

— Abraham Lincoln

Slavery, properly so called, is the establishment of a right which gives to one man such a power over another as renders him absolute…

— Anonymous

Civil rights, as we may remember, are reducible to three primary heads; the right of personal security; the right of personal liberty; and the…

— St. George Tucker

Talk about slavery! It is not the peculiar institution of the South. It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows…

— Henry David Thoreau

I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to…

— Abraham Lincoln

“The Constitution was a compromise between slaveholding interests of the South and moneyed interests of the North. For the purpose of uniting the thirteen…

— Howard Zinn

“Slavery does not merely mean a legalised form of subjection. It means a state of society in which some men are forced to accept…

— Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal, is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in…

— John Ruskin

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said…

— Abraham Lincoln

Each state, so that it does not abridge the great fundamental rights belonging, under the Constitution, to all citizens, may grant or withhold such…

— Lyman Trumbull