To yield, to draw a new Missouri line, to accept amendments to the Constitution, and to give servitude a place and right in it. This would be to lose the whole fruit of a hard-won triumph, shamefully to perpetuate the scourge just condemned by the universal suffrage, and to invalidate the very title by which the President holds office;

To maintain the Union by force, a perilous, ruinous, lamentable means, difficult in so great a space with so few troops, but after all more injurious to the South than the North, since the first roar of the cannon would give the signal for slave insurrections;

To fix a delay, as was done with the slave-trade in 1794, in order to gain time to restore tranquillity, pave the way for transition and regulate different interests, but on condition of maintaining the Union, the best and most reasonable means of all, if the South would but listen to reason; Or to leave the seceded States to themselves, under protest, however, without abandoning the right.

Installed on the 4th of March, 1861, seventy-two years after the illustrious Washington, "the first in peace, the first in war, and the first in the hearts of his countrymen," President Lincoln delivered a conciliating, firm, and sensible inaugural address, which may be summed up as follows.

The Union of the States dates from the Declaration of Independence in 1776; renewed by the Articles of Confederation in 1778, it was consolidated by the Constitution of 1787, which was drawn up for the express purpose of rendering the Union more perfect.

Either this Union has formed a nation, in which case it is perpetual;

Or this Union is merely a contract, in which case it cannot be annulled except by the wish of all the parties;

Therefore, the separation violently decreed by the South is without right.

In the second place, it is without reason.

"For," says

the President, "I have no design for interfering, either directly or indirectly, with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe that I have no right, and I feel no wish, to do so." Then what are the questions under discussion ? Shall the search for fugitive slaves, guaranteed by the Constitution, be insured and pursued by the State authorities or the national power? The Constitution does not decide. Shall Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not decide. Who is to settle these questions? The Supreme Court? No, for it can only decide between parties in law and in cases submitted to it; if it should render general decisions, the American people would have abdicated in its favor; it would be no longer the interpreter, but the ruler, of the Constitution. The true ruling power is a national convention, summoned according to constitutional forms. The majority must decide. Now the majority is the sole ruling power of a free people, since unanimity is impossible. Whoever rejects the majority falls necessarily into anarchy and despotism.

Secession, which is without right and without reason, is also without efficacy. How long will a confederacy exist which is founded on the right of secession, a confederacy in the heart of which a minority may demand a new secession? To-morrow the slave-trade will be free, but the flight of slaves will be free also. To-morrow the States will be separated, but they will not be removed from each other; they will be no longer united, but they will be neighbors, obliged to live face to face in peace or war. "Is it possible, then, to make intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Suppose you go to war; you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical questions as to terms of intercourse are again before you."

There is no reason whatever for acting precipitately. "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulties."

So.

President Lincoln, therefore, does not regard the Union as broken. He vows to maintain it peaceably, without having recourse to arms, unless he is constrained to do He goes far in the way of concessions, since he declares the domestic institutions of the South unassailable, and the law insuring the surrender of fugitive slaves constitutional. He counsels time, and the convocation of a great convention, deputed by the people to amend or maintain the Constitution.

While the President spoke as if the South had not seceded, the South organized itself as if the President had not been inaugurated; it chose a President, installed him at Montgomery, despatched ambassadors to Europe to demand of England and France whether they would recognize the failure of the great political work which the one has combated and the other seconded; in fine, it gave the signal for civil war.

Europe will dishonor herself, should she open her arms without inquiry or delay to this strange nation, the offspring of slavery. Let her at least leave time to the wise and patriotic citizens whose efforts and counsels are tending to unite again in the same family, the divided elements of the American people. Let her also leave time to do justice to the mad and culpable attempt of the Southern States, which the North cannot better chastise than by sanctioning. Yes, let them be left to themselves, but without rendering honors to their flag, without opening the doors of Europe to their ambassadors, without adding their name after those of France and Great Britain to the glorious list of illustrious nations.

What! because two or three hundred thousand capitalists work three millions of kidnapped, whipped, degraded beings, because this scandal is advantageous to the culture of cotton, sugar, and tobacco, is this evident crime, this ignoble profit, to be weighed in the balance with the existence of the Constitution, the honor of a great and youthful nation, the love of country and the progress of the human race? "We will secede," repeat a few merchants in human flesh, "and the republic may settle it as it can." I dare affirm, that of all the Christian nations in the whole universe, there is not one, unless it be the United States, where such words could be spoken, or where such words could obtain a hearing. Imagine a Liverpool merchant holding such language in the English Parliament fancy the blacksmiths of Saint-Étienne, or the farmers of the provinces, addressing such a summons to the French government! But how could one suppose it? Such an hypothesis is an insult. I am well aware that each of the United States is a sovereign; they compose a federation, and the bond is more easily broken. I know, too, that history presents memorable examples of separation; our century offers none more admirable than the emancipation of the United States themselves; interests, fortune, life, were trifles when the companions of Washington fought to repel injustice and secure country, name, rights, and flag. To this magnanimous and disinterested separation, what is sought to be compared? A sort of forced liquidation, after the manner of the fraudulent dissolution of a commercial partnership. The Union separated from England to be free; the South separates from the Union for what? In order not to diminish the profits of cotton and the revenues of the trade in men.

How can one help being tempted to reply to this absurd threat:

Do you wish to secede ? Secede then!

Yes, let there

be henceforth two North Americas; the one, the mother of liberty, the other, the last refuge of slavery. Recommence the slave-trade, abandon yourselves to your sordid interests without limit or scruple!

The sun will not cease to rise on this fruitful land, the Ohio will not cease to bear its waves to the Mississippi, the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf to become lost in the ocean. The South will have no less need of the capital, intellect, and wheat of the North, nor the North of the cotton, rice, and tobacco of the South. But below a free and flourishing republic, which will have preferred justice to power, a second republic, nameless, branded, blighted, menaced by slavery, having sacrificed greatness to interest, having bartered the Gospel and the Constitution for a bale of cotton, will present itself alone to the contempt of the world, and will erelong behold flight, insurrection, death, or war snatch from it even the profits of servitude.

When you are divided, dishonored, ruined, sunk below the republics of South America, perhaps you will return to solicit re-entrance into the Union which alone makes your honor and your strength. To us, Northern men, the day of separation will be one of new glory; ask of us no more fugitive slave laws or share in our votes, functions, and institutions; we will divide our flag, to us, the stars of independence, to you the bars of servitude.

At the moment that these pages· this ardent but useless protest are written and finished, the world is in doubt whether this illustrious banner may not be forever rent in twain. We follow with mingled terror and anxiety the increasing struggles which are about, by their inevitable shock, to kindle upon the distant continent the terrible