To the old Union they had said that the Federal power had no authority to interfere with slavery issues in a state. To their new nation they would declare that the state had no power to interfere with a federal protection of slavery. Of all the many testimonials to the fact that slavery, and not states rights, really lay at the heart of their movement, this was the most eloquent of all.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William C. Davis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.