rt of the message.

"The States have their status in the Union and they have no other legal
status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and
by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their
independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase, the Union gave
each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The Union is
older than any of the States, and in fact, it created them as States.
Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and in turn, the
Union threw off this old dependence for them and made them States, such
as they are."(9)

This first message completes the evolution of Lincoln as a political
thinker. It is his third, his last great landmark. The Peoria speech,
which drew to a focus all the implications of his early life, laid the
basis of his political significance; the Cooper Union speech, summing
up his conflict with Douglas, applied his thinking to the new issue
precipitated by John Brown; but in both these he was still predominantly
a negative thinker, still the voice of an opposition. With the first
message, he became creative; he drew together what was latent in his
earlier thought; he discarded the negative; he laid the foundation of
all his subsequent policy. The breadth and depth of his thinking is
revealed by the fulness with which the message develops the implications
of his theory. In so doing, he anticipated the main issues that were to
follow: his determination to keep nationalism from being narrowed into
mere "Northernism"; his effort to create an all-parties government; his
stubborn insistence that he was suppressing an insurrection, not waging
external war; his doctrine that the Executive, having been chosen by the
entire people, was the one expression of the sovereignty of the people,
and therefore, the repository of all these exceptional "war powers" that
are dormant in time of peace. Upon each of those issues he was destined
to wage fierce battles with the politicians who controlled Congress, who
sought to make Congress his master, who thwarted, tormented and almost
defeated him. In the light of subsequent history the first message has
another aspect besides its significance as political science. In its
clear understanding of the implications of his attitude, it attains
political second sight. As Lincoln, immovable, gazes far into the
future, his power of vision makes him, yet again though in a widely
different sense, the "see