Preston Brooks

“Whatever insults my State insults me.”

“They had no right, as it seems to me, to prosecute me in these Halls; nor have you the right in law or under the Constitution, as I respectfully submit, to take jurisdiction over offenses committed against them.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”