He repeated his plea that they be fair and open-minded, open to reason and compromise, and praised them for being so reasonable and open-minded thus … - Robert A. Caro

I, sir, take a different view of the whole matter. I look upon Ohio and South Carolina to be parts of one whole — parts of the same country — and that country is my country.… I come here not to consider that I will do this for one distinct part of it, and that for another, but … to legislate for the whole.” And finally Webster turned to a higher idea: the idea — in and of itself — of Union, permanent and enduring.

Johnson told the doctors that “he enjoyed nothing but whiskey, sunshine and sex.” Reedy found the moment “poignant,” he was to recall. “Without realizing what he was doing, he had outlined succinctly the tragedy of his life. The only way he could get away from himself was sensation: sun, booze, sex.

No southerner had been elected President for more than a century, and it was a bitter article of faith among southern politicians that no southerner would be elected President in any foreseeable future; when members of the House of Representatives gave their Speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the House for more than two decades, a limousine as a present, attached to the back of the front seat was a plaque that read 'To Our Beloved Sam Rayburn - Who Would Have Been President If He Had Come From Any Place but the South.