med a
contract with each other which should be inviolable."

"Then, at the worst, the seceding States are guilty of a breach of
contract with the remaining States, but not with the General Government,
with which they made no contract. They formed a union, it is true. But
of what? Of sovereignties. How can those States be sovereignties which
admit a power above them, possessing the right of coercion? To admit the
right of coercion is to deny the existence of sovereignty."

"You can find nothing in the Constitution to intimate the right of
secession."

"Because its framers considered the right sufficiently established by
the very nature of the confederation. The fears upon the subject that
were expressed by Patrick Henry, and other zealous supporters of State
Rights, were quieted by the assurances of the opposite party, who
ridiculed the idea that a convention, similar to that which in each
State adopted the Constitution, could not thereafter, in representation
of the popular will, withdraw such State from the confederacy. You
have, in proof of this, but to refer to the annals of the occasion."

"I discard the theory as utterly inconsistent with any legislative
power. We have either a government or we have not. If we have one, it
must possess within itself the power to sustain itself. Our chief
magistrate becomes otherwise a mere puppet, and our Congress a shallow
mockery, and the shadow only of a legislative body. Our nationality
becomes a word, and nothing more. Our place among the nations becomes
vacant, and the great Republic, our pride and the world's wonder,
crumbles into fragments, and with its downfall perishes the hope of the
oppressed of every clime. I wonder, Beverly, that you can coldly argue
against the very life of your country, and not feel the parricide's
remorse! Have you no lingering affection for the glorious structure
which our fathers built for and bequeathed to us, and which you now seek
to hurl from its foundations? Have you no pride and love for the brave
old flag that has been borne in the vanguard to victory so often, that
has shrouded the lifeless form of Lawrence, that has gladdened the
heart of the American wandering in foreign climes, and has spread its
sacred folds over the head of Washington, here, on your own native
soil?"

"Yes, Harold, yes! I love the Union, and I love and am proud of the
brave old flag; I would die for either, and, although I reason with you
coldly, my soul yearns