Preston Brooks

“ If, unhappily, the day should ever come when sectional or party feeling should run so high as to control all other considerations of public duty or justice, how easy it will be to use such precedents for the excuse of arbitrary power, in either House, to expel members of the minority who may have rendered themselves obnoxious to the prevailing spirit in the House to which they belong. ”

“ To such of these as have given their votes and made their speeches on the constitutional principles involved, and without indulging in personal vilification, I owe my respect. But, sir, they have written me down upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion, and in no unkindness I must tell them that for all future time my self-respect requires that I shall pass them as strangers.
And now, Mr. Speaker, I announce to you and to this House, that I am no longer a member of the Thirty-Fourth Congress. [Mr. Brooks then walked out of the House of Representatives.] ”

“ Matters may go smoothly enough when one House asks the other to punish a member who is offensive to a majority of its own body but how will it be when, upon a presence of insulted dignity, demands are made of this House to expel a member who happens to run counter to its party predilections, or other demands which it may not be so agreeable to grant? ”

“ But if I had committed a breach of privilege, it was the privilege of the Senate, and not of this House, which was violated. I was answerable there, and not here. ”

“ Speaker, return to your own home, and hear the people of the great North and they are a great people speak of me as a bad man, you will do me the justice to say that a blow struck by me at this time would be followed by revolution and this I know. ”

“ If I desired to kill the Senator, why did not I do it? You all admit that I had him in my power. ”

“ Whatever insults my State insults me. ”

“ I should have forfeited my own self-respect, and perhaps the good opinion of my countrymen, if I had failed to resent such an injury by calling the offender in question to a personal account. ”