ment of constitution and lawswherein a general or a President may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?"

SPEECH AT

INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 20, 1861.

"I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother-land, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the burden should be lifted from the shoulders of all men."

INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 1861.

"Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form, is all that is left."

LETTER TO HON. REVERDY JOHNSON, THEN AT NEW ORLEANS, JULY 26, 1862.

"The people of Louisiana-all intelligent people, everywhereknow full well that I never had a wish to touch the foundations of their society, or any right of theirs."

LETTER TO CHARLES DRAKE, AND OTHERS, COMMITTEE, ST. LOUIS, MO., OCT. 5, 1863.

"Actual war coming, blood grows hot and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures, deemed indispensable but harsh at best, such men make worse by mal-administration. Murders for all grudges and murders for pelf proceed under any cloak that will best serve for the occasion."