people, shall withhold the requisition, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary.

I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.

In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it is forced upon the national authority.

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government, and collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. *****

Physically speaking, we cannot separate; we cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after the separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? 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 upon you.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the National Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendment, I fully recognize the full authority of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in

either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself, and I should, under existing circumstances, favor, than rather oppose, a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it. *****

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present differences is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people. By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.

If there be an object to hurry any of you, in hot haste, to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.

Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either.

If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there is still no single reason for precipitate action. 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.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not

in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. ment will not assail you.

The govern

You can have no conflict without being yourselves the You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy

aggressors.

the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend” it.

We

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection.

The mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Extract from Lincoln's First Message' to Congress

A special session of Congress convened July 4, 1861, in obedience to the summons of the President. His message portrayed the situation of affairs, and described the steps already taken by the government to meet the emergency. In it the President referred to the difficulties and perplexities with which he was confronted, and made suggestions in regard to methods of overcoming them, as follows:

It may be affirmed, without extravagance, that the free institutions we enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking and an impressive illustration.

So large an army as the government now has on foot was never before known,-without a soldier in it but who had taken his place there of his own free choice. But more than this: there are many single regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or

1. Who was the first President to send a written message to Congress ? It was at first the custom for the President to address Congress, upon its assembling, in person.

elegant,' is known in the world; and there is scarcely one from which there could not be selected a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself.

Nor do I say that this is not true also in the army of our late friends, now our adversaries, in this contest; but if it is so, so much better the reason why the government, which has conferred such benefits on both them and us, should not be broken up.

Whoever, in any section, proposes to abandon such a government, would do well to consider in deference to what principle it is that he does it, what better he is likely to get in its stead, whether the substitute will give or be intended to give so much of good to the people. There are some foreshadowings upon this question.

Our adversaries have adopted some declaration of independence, in which, unlike the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "all men are created equal." Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble2 of which, unlike our good old one signed by Washington, they omit "We, the people," and substitute "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.

Yielding to partial and temporary departures from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend."

1. Distinguish between useful and elegant. What word could be more correctly used as the antithesis of useful? 2. Derivation and meaning?

3. Which of the words in this sentence are of Latin origin? If Anglo

I am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this. It is worthy of note that, while in this, the government's hour of trial large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favored with the offices have resigned and proven false to the hand which pampered them, not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag.

Great honor is due to those officers who remained true, despite the example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor and most important fact of all is the unanimous firmness of the common soldiers and the common sailors. To the last man, so far as known, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those whose commands but an hour before they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand, without an argument, that the destroying the government which was made by Washington means no good to them.

Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settledthe successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains-its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it.

It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war; teaching all the folly of being beginners of a war.

Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid1 men

Saxon words were substituted for the Latin words, how would the sentence differ in force and smoothness?

1. Derived from a Latin word meaning "white." What is its present meaning, and how derived? Cf. Candidate.