Just what is the civil law? What neither influence can affect, nor power break, nor money corrupt: were it to be suppressed or eve...n merely ignored or inadequately observed, no one would feel safe about anything, whether his own possessions, the inheritance he expects from his father, or the bequests he makes to his children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is obvious that the French Revolution was a vaster and more profound social upheaval, involving more violent conflict between c...lasses, more radical reorganization of government and society, more far-reaching redefinition of marriage, property, and civil law as well as of organs of public authority, more redistribution of wealth and income, more fears on the part of the rich and more demands from the poor, more sensational repercussions in other countries, more crises of counterrevolution, war, and invasion, and more drastic or emergency measures, as in the Reign of Terror. From very early in the French Revolution the American Revo lution came to seem very moderate. Thomas Jefferson, who was then in France, feared that the French were going to dangerous extremes as early as June 1789.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is all the difference in the world between the criminal's avoiding the public eye and the civil disobedient's taking the law... into his own hands in open defiance. This distinction between an open violation of the law, performed in public, and a clandestine one is so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The representative women of the nation have done their uttermost for the last thirty years to secure freedom for the negro, and so... long as he was lowest in the scale of being we were allowed to press his claims; but now, as the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see "Sambo" walk into the kingdom first. As self-preservation is the first law of nature, would it not be wiser to keep our lamps trimmed and burning, and when the constitutional door is open, avail ourselves of the strong arm and blue uniform of the black soldier to walk in by his side, and thus make the gap so wide that no privileged class could ever again close it against the humblest citizen of the republic?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When and under what conditions is the black man to have a free ballot? When is he in fact to have those full civil rights which ha...ve so long been his in law?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Another danger is imminent: A contested result. And we have no such means for its decision as ought to be provided by law. This mu...st be attended to hereafter.... If a contest comes now it may lead to a conflict of arms. I can only try to do my duty to my countrymen in that case. I shall let no personal ambition turn me from the path of duty. Bloodshed and civil war must be averted if possible. If forced to fight, I have no fears from lack of courage or firmness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I suppose you all realize that as members of the court marshall for the trial of the conspirators in the assassination of our belo...ved president you have on your souls a grave responsibility. The object of this trial is not to determine the guilt or innocence of a handful of rebels but to save this country from further bloodshed. The solemn truth, gentlemen, is that the federal union is on the verge of hysteria. That is why the trial of these conspirators has been placed in your hands rather than in a civil court. Because men of the sword can be hard, and hardness is all that can save this country from riot, mob rule, even resumption of the war itself.... To help you to be hard, first, you must not allow your judgement in decision in this case to be troubled by any trifling technicalities of the law or any pedantic regard for the customary rules of evidence. Second, and most important, you must not allow yourself to be influenced by that obnoxious creation of legal nonsense--reasonable doubt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They who say that women do not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine domination to self-government, falsify eve...ry page of history, every fact in human experience. It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly accepts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In 1694 a law was passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear of the Indians should forfeit all his rights therein." B...ut now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may desert the fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, which are the State's best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters' camp itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in poss...ession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man's yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »