“I am a planter - a cotton planter. I am a Southern man and a slavehold...” — John C. Calhoun Quote

I am a planter - a cotton planter. I am a Southern man and a slaveholder - a kind and a merciful one, I trust - and none the worse for being a slaveholder.

I want no presidency; I want to do my duty. No denunciations here, or out of this House, can deflect me a single inch from going directly at what I aim, and that is, the good of the country. I have always acted upon it, and I will always act upon it.

Restore, without delay, the equilibrium between revenue and expenditures, which has done so much to destroy our credit and derange the whole fabric of government. If that should not be done, the government and country will be involved, ere long, in overwhelming difficulties.

I am, on principle, opposed to war and in favor of peace because I regard peace as a positive good and war as a positive evil.

I sleep on a Tempur-Pedic mattress, and I have custom-made sheets. They're white with some patterns, and the highest thread count of Egyptian cotton you can get.

My father was raised in the mountains of New Mexico, and he picked cotton for a dollar a day. He was working for the family from the time he was 7.

I was never a chiffon and satin person. I am always a cotton person. It's just the way I am.

On my worst day I always tell myself I'm not in a field picking cotton.

Being a slave meant never having the stability of knowing your family would be together as many years as God designed it to be. It meant you could come back from picking cotton in a field to find that your children are gone, your husband's gone, your mother's gone.