Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.
If the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.
My policy is to have no policy.
We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong.
In law it is good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot