re
integrity of the Union, and freedom throughout all its borders, will be
treason to our country and to mankind. (_Loud cheers._) To acknowledge
the absurd and anarchical doctrine of secession, as is demanded of us
here, to abdicate the power of self-preservation, and permit the Union
to be dissolved, is ruin, disgrace, and suicide. There is but one
alternative--we must and will fight it out to the last. (_Loud and
prolonged applause._) If need be, all who can bear arms must take the
field, and leave to those who cannot the pursuits of industry. (_Hear,
hear._) If we count not the cost of this contest in men and money, it is
because all loyal Americans believe that the value of our Union cannot
be estimated. (_Hear, hear._) If martyrs from every State, from England,
and from nearly every nation of Christendom have fallen in our defence,
never, in humble faith we trust, has any blood, since that of Calvary,
been shed in a cause so holy. (_Cheers._) Most of the rebellions which
have disturbed or overthrown governments, ave been caused by oppression
on their part. Such rebellions have been the rising of the oppressed
against the oppressor; but this rebellion was caused exclusively by
slavery. (_Cheers._) To extend, and perpetuate, and nationalize slavery,
to demand of the American Congress the direct and explicit recognition
of the right of property in man, to cover the whole vast territory of
the Union with chattel servitude, to keep open the interstate
slave-trade between the Border and the Cotton States, to give the
institution absolute mastery over the Government and people, to carry it
into every new State by fraud, and violence, and forgery, as was
exemplified in Kansas, and then, as a final result, to force it upon
every Free State of the Union--these were the objects conceived by those
who are engaged in this foul conspiracy to dissolve the American Union.
(_Cheers._) 'I have said that the American Union never will be
dissolved.' (_Loud and continued cheers._) This was the advice of the
peerless Washington, the Father of his country, in his Farewell Address,
and this was the course of the immortal Andrew Jackson, when he
suppressed the Carolina rebellion of 1833, by coercion and a force bill.
The American Union is the great citadel of self-government, intrusted to
our charge by Providence; and we must defend it against all assailants,
until our last man has fallen. This is the cause of labor and humanity,
and the t