it be said, "The gates of hell can not prevail against them." In all trying positions in which I shall be placed, and, doubtless, I shall be placed in many such, my reliance will be placed upon you and the people of the United States; and I wish you to remember, now and forever, that it is your business, and not mine; that if the union of these states, and the liberties of this people shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.

It is your business to rise up and preserve the Union and liberty for yourselves, and not for me.

I desire they should be constitutionally performed. I, as already intimated, am but an accidental instrument, temporary, and to serve but for a limited time, and I appeal to you again to constantly bear in mind that with you, and not with politicians, not with presidents, not with office-seekers, but with you, is the question, Shall the Union, and shall the liberties of this country be preserved to the latest generation? CONTINUED AT INDIANAPOLIS IN THE EVENING, Before THE LEGISLATURE, FEBRUARY 11, 1861.

Fellow-citizens of the State of Indiana :-I am here to thank you much for this magnificent welcome, and still more for the generous support given by your state to that political cause which I think is the true and great cause of the whole country and the whole world.

Solomon says there is "a time to keep silence," and

when men wrangle by the mouth 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 definition of these words, not from dictionaries, but from the men themselves, who certainly depreciate 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; and it would be "coercion" also if the South Carolinians were forced to submit.

But if the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, and 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 coercion or invasion of a state? If so, their idea of means to preserve the object of their affection would seem exceedingly thin and airy. If sick, the little pills of the homeopathists 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 a sort of "free love" arrangement, to be maintained only 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; but that, by the bond we all recognize.

That position, however, a state can not 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 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 principle may a state, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the nation, in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce 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 any thing; I am merely asking questions for you to consider. And now allow me to bid you farewell.

SPEECH AT CINCINNATI, FEBRUARY 12, 1861.

Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen:-Twenty-four hours ago, at the capital of Indiana, I said to myself, "I have never seen so many people assembled together in winter weather." I am no longer able to

say that. But it is what might reasonably have been expected that this great city of Cincinnati would thus acquit herself on such an occasion. My friends, I am entirely overwhelmed by the magnificence of the reception which has been given, I will not say to me, but to the President-elect of the United States of America. Most heartily do I thank you, one and all, for it. I am reminded by the address of your worthy Mayor, that this reception is given not by one political party; and even if I had not been so reminded by His Honor, I could not have failed to know the fact by the extent of the multitude I see before me now. I could not look upon this vast assemblage without being made aware that all parties were united in this reception. This is as it should be. It is as it should have been if Senator Douglas had been elected; it is as it should have been if Mr. Bell had been elected ; as it should have been if Mr. Breckinridge had been elected; as it should ever be when any citizen of the United States is constitutionally elected President of the United States. Allow me to say that I think what has occurred here to-day could not have occurred in any other country on the face of the globe, without the influence of the free institutions which we have unceasingly enjoyed for three-quarters of a century.

There is no country where the people can turn out and enjoy this day precisely as they please, save under the benigu influence of the free institutions of our land.

I hope that, although we have some threatening national difficulties now, while these free institutions

shall continue to be in the enjoyment of millions of free people of the United States, we will see repeated every four years what we now witness.

In a few short years I and every other individual man who is now living will pass away. I hope that our national difficulties will also pass away, and I hope we shall see in the streets of Cincinnati-good old Cincinnati-for centuries to come, once every four years, the people give such a reception as this to the constitutionally elected President of the whole United States. I hope you will all join in that reception, and that you shall also welcome your brethren across the river to participate in it. We will welcome them in every state in the Union, no matter where they are from. From away South, we shall extend to them a cordial good will, when our present differences shall have been forgotten and blown to the winds forever.

I have spoken but once before this in Cincinnati. That was a year previous to the late presidential election. On that occasion, in a playful manner, but with sincere words, I addressed much of what I said to the Kentuckians. I gave as my opinion that we, as Republicans, would ultimately beat them as Democrats, but that they could postpone that result longer by nominating Senator Douglas for the presidency than they could in any other way. They did not, in the true sense of the word nominate Douglas, and the result has come certainly as soon as I expected. I also told them how I expected they would be treated after they should have been beaten; and I now wish to call or recall their attention to what I then said