slaved were of the same race, and their enslavement in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it; and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made 'one star to differ from another in glory.'

"The great objects of humanity are best attained when conformed to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone, which was rejected by the first builders, 'is become the chief stone of the corner' in our new edifice. [Applause.]

"I have been asked, What of the future? It has been apprehended by some that we

would have arrayed against us the civilized world. I care not who or how many they may be; when we stand upon the eternal principles of truth, we are obliged to and must triumph. [Immense applause.]"

With regard to future accessions to the Confederacy, Mr. Stephens

said:

"Our growth by accessions from other States will depend greatly upon whether we present to the world, as I trust we shall, a better government than that to which they belong. If we do this, North Carolina, Ten

nessee, and Arkansas, cannot hesitate long; neither can Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri. They will necessarily gravitate to us by an imperious law. We made ample provision in our Constitution for the admission of other States. It is more guarded--and wisely so, I think-than the old Constitution on the same subject; but not too guarded to receive them so fast as it may be proper. Looking to the distant future-and perhaps not very distant either-it is not beyond the range of possibility, and even probability, that all the great States of the North-West shall gravitate this way, as well as Ten

nessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, etc. Should they do so, our doors are wide

17

enough to receive them; but not until they are ready to assimilate with us in principle.

"The process of disintegration in the old Union may be expected to go on with almost absolute certainty. We are now the nucleus of a growing power; which, if we are true to ourselves, our destiny, and our high mission, will become the controlling power on this continent. To what extent accessions will go on, in the process of time, or where it will end, the future will determine. So far as it concerns States of the old Union, they will be upon no such principle of reconstruction as is now spoken of, but upon reörganization and new assimilation. [Loud applause.] Such are some of the glimpses of the future as I catch them."

Mr. Abraham Lincoln, on the 11th of February, left his home at Springfield, Illinois, for Washington, receiving on the advices that he had way been, upon a careful canvass and comparison of the Electoral votes by Congress, proclaimed" by Vice-President Breckinridge the duly elected President of the United States, for four years from the 4th of March ensuing. Immense crowds surrounded the stations at which the special train halted wherein he, with his family and a few friends, was borne eastward through Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, Albany, New York City, Trenton, Newark, Philadelphia, Lancaster, and Harrisburg, on his way to the White House. He was everywhere received and honored as the chief of a free people; and his unstudied remarks in reply to the complimentary addresses which he day by day received indicated his decided disbelief in any bloody issue of our domestic complications.

Thus, at Indianapolis, where he spent the first night of his journey, he replied to an address of welcome from Gov. Morton, as follows:

"FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE STATE OF INDIANA: I am here to thank you much for this magnificent welcome, and still more for the very generous support given by your State to that political cause which, I think, is the true and just cause of the whole country and the whole world. Solomon says, 'There is a time to keep silence;' and, when men wrangle by the month with no certainty that they mean the same thing while using the same word, it perhaps were as well if they would keep silence. The words 'coercion' and 'invasion' are much used in these days, and often with some temper and hot blood. Let us make sure, if we can, that we do not misunderstand the meaning of those who use them. Let us get the exact definitions of these words, not from dictionaries, but from

the men themselves, who certainly deprecate the things they would represent by the use of the words. What, then, is 'coercion'? What is 'invasion'? Would the marching of an army into South Carolina without the consent of her people, and with hostile intent toward them, be invasion? I certainly think it would be 'invasion,' and 'coërcion' also, if the South Carolinians were forced to submit. But, if the United States should merely hold and retake her own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, or even withhold the mails from places where they were habitually violated, would any or all these things be invasion' or 'coercion'? Do our professed lovers of the Union, but who spitefully resolve that they will resist coercion and invasion, understand that such things as these on the part of the United States would be 'coërcion' or 'invasion' of a State? If so, their idea of means to preserve the object of their great affection would seem to be exceedingly thin and airy. If sick, the little pills of the homœopathist would be much too large for it to swallow. In their view, the Union, as a family relation, would seem to be no regular marriage, but rather a sort of free-love arrangement, to be maintained on passional attraction. By the way, in what consists the special sacredness of a State? I speak not of the position assigned to a State in the Union by the Constitution; for that is the bond we all recognize. That position, however, a State cannot carry out of the Union with it. I speak of that assumed primary right of a State to rule all which is less than itself, and to ruin all which is larger than itself. If a State and a County, in a given case, should be equal in extent of territory and equal in number of inhabitants, in what, as a matter of principle, is the State better than the County? Would an exchange of names be an exchange of rights? Upon principle, on what rightful ground may a State, being no more than one-fiftieth part

419

of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coërce a proportionally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by merely calling it a State?

"Fellow-citizens, I am not asserting anything. I am merely asking questions for you to consider. And now, allow me to bid you farewell."

At Columbus, Ohio, he said:

"I have not maintained silence from any want of real anxiety. It is a good thing that there is no more than anxiety; for there is nothing going wrong. It is a consoling circumstance that, when we look out, there is nothing that really hurts anybody. We entertain different views upon political questions: but nobody is suffering anything. from it we may conclude that all we want is This is a most consoling circumstance; and time, patience, and a reliance on that God who has never forsaken this people."

At Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the 15th, he said:

"Notwithstanding the troubles across the river [the speaker pointing southwardly across the Monongahela, and smiling, there is no crisis but an artificial one. What is there now to warrant the condition of affairs presented by our friends over the river? Take even their own views of the questions involved, and there is nothing to justify the course they are pursuing. I repeat, then, there is no crisis, except such a one as may be gotten up at any time by turbulent men, aided by designing politicians. My advice to them, under the circumstances, is to keep cool. If the great American people only keep their temper both sides of the line, the trouble will come to an end, and the question which now distracts the country be settled, just as surely as all other diforiginated in this Government, have been ficulties, of a like character, which have adjusted. Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and, just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this great nation continue to prosper as heretofore."

At Philadelphia, being required to assist at the solemn raising of the United States flag over Independence Hall, Mr. Lincoln, in reply to an address of welcome by Mr. Theodore Cuyler, said:

"I have often pondered over the dangers incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of

Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of my self, 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 weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now,

my friends, can this country be saved on that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved on that basis, it will be truly awful. But, if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say that I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there need be no bloodshed or war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course; and I may say, in advance, that there will be no bloodshed, unless it be forced upon the Government, and then it will be compelled to act in self-defense."

Arrived at Harrisburg, however, on the 22d, Mr. Lincoln, looking across the slave line, experienced suddenly a decided change in the political barometer. It had been arranged that he should next day pass through Baltimore, the center of a grand procession a cynosure of admiring eyes -the object of enthusiastic acclamations as he had, thus far, passed through nearly all the great cities of the Free States. But Baltimore was a slaveholding city, and the spirit of Slavery was nowhere else more rampant and ferocious. The mercantile and social aristocracy of that city had been sedulously, persistently, plied by the conspirators for disunion with artful suggestions that, in a confede

18 The Baltimore Exchange of February 23d, significantly said:

"Mr. Lincoln, the President elect of the United States, will arrive in this city with his

racy composed exclusively of the fif teen Slave States, Baltimore would hold the position that New York enjoys in the Union, being the great ship-building, shipping, importing and commercial emporium, whitening the ocean with her sails, and gemming Maryland with the palaces. reared from her ample and everexpanding profits. That aristocracy had been, for the most part, thoroughly corrupted by these insidious whispers, and so were ready to rush into treason. At the other end of the social scale was the mob-reckless and godless, as mobs are apt to be, especially in slaveholding communities-and ready at all times to do the bidding of the Slave Power. Between these was the great middle class, loyal and peacefully inclined, as this class usually is-outnumbering both the others, but hitherto divided between the old pro-Slavery parties, and having arrived, as yet, at no common understanding with regard to the novel circumstances of the country and the events visibly impending.

The city government was in the hands of the Breckinridge Democracy, who had seized it under a cry of reform; and the leaders of that Democracy were deep in the counsels of treason. It had been proclaimed, in many quarters, and through various channels, that Mr. Lincoln should never live to be inaugurated; and The Baltimore Republican of the 22d had a leading article directly calculated to incite tumult and violence on the occasion of Mr. Lincoln's passage through the city." The police

suite this afternoon by special train from Harrisburgh, and will proceed, we learn, directly to Washington. It is to be hoped that no oppor tunity will be afforded him-or that, if it be af forded, he will not embrace it-to repeat in our

stood till they were seated. The remaining space on the floor was now filled to its utmost capacity by members of the House, just adjourned; and it was soon afterward announced that the Presidential party had entered the edifice. On its appearance, the whole assemblage proceeded to the magnificent and spacious Eastern portico of the Capitol, on which a platform had been erected, and in front of which a considerable space had been cleared, and was held, by the Military. The President elect was barely introduced to the vast concourse by Col. Edward D. Baker, Senator from Oregon, and received with cheers from perhaps a fourth of the thirty thousand persons confronting him. Si lence having succeeded, Mr. Lincoln unrolled a manuscript, and, in a firm, clear, penetrating voice, read the following

INAUGURAL ADDRESS.

Fellow-Citizens of the United States:

In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President, before he enters on the execution of his office.

I do not consider it necessary, at present, for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement. Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States, that, by the accession of a Republican Administration, their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed, and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches, when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists." I believe I have no lawful right to do so; and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and

elected me, did so with the full knowledge declarations, and had never recanted them. that I had made this, and many similar And, more than this, they placed in the platform, for my acceptance, and as a law to resolution which I now read: themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic

"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judg ment exclusively, is essential to that balance of of our political fabric depend; and we denounce power on which the perfection and endurance

the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."

I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security, of no section are to be in anywise endangered by the now incoming Administration.

I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States, when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause, as cheerfully to one section as to another.

There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:

"No person held to service or labor in one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may

be due."

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law.

All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution to this provision as well as any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up," their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not, with nearly equal unanimity, frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by National or by State authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others