When Taft gives way to his (anger), one reporter observed, it is to inflict a merciless thrashing upon its victim, for whom thereafter he has no use … - Doris Kearns Goodwin

grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

There was never any doubt that the local jury would return a guilty verdict. “In due time, gentlemen of the jury,” Seward concluded, “when I shall have paid the debt of nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, with those of my kindred and neighbors. It is very possible they may be unhonored, neglected, spurned! But, perhaps years hence, when the passion and excitement which now agitate this community shall have passed away, some wandering stranger, some lone exile, some Indian, some negro, may erect over them a humble stone, and thereon this epitaph, ‘He was Faithful!’ ” More than a century afterward, visitors to Seward’s grave at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn would find those very words engraved on his tombstone.

Roosevelt declared, arguing that “the insistence upon having only the perfect cure often results in securing no betterment whatever.