“I, for one, am very much disposed to favor the colonization of such free negroes as are willing to Central America. I want to have nothing to do with the free negro or the slave negro. We, the Republican Party, are the white man's party. [Great applause.] We are for free white men, and for making white labor respectable and honorable, which it never can be when negro slave labor is brought into competition with it. [Great applause.] We wish to settle the territories with free white men, and we are willing that this negro race should go anywhere that it can to better its condition, wishing them God speed, wherever they go. We believe it is better for us that they should not be among us. I believe it will be better for them to go elsewhere.”
Senator Lyman Trumbull
The Campaign in Illinois, Chicago, 1858, pp. 8-9