weight, they rose up in rebellion against this unalterable fact. They
foresaw it, and, by every possible device, resisted it before it came.
When it arrived, they resisted still more madly, even to the extent of
self-destruction. The minority was arrayed not merely against the
majority, but also against the necessary results of our institutions and
against the decrees of nature: that is to say, against the law of man,
and against the law of God. The majority was expected to give way, and
to permit the engine of national progress to be reversed, our eighty
years of glorious history to be undone, and humanity itself to be turned
back upon the dreary path of its earliest and saddest struggles. This
refused, the alternative was the destruction of the Government.

It was wholly impossible for the majority to make any satisfactory
concessions to a minority infatuated with such ideas. Compromise was
impracticable, so long as the rebellious States made the perpetuity of
slavery and the predominance of its power an indispensable condition of
any arrangement. Their demands were forever inadmissible so long as they
remained in the Union; and to permit them to effect their purposes as an
independent confederacy, was equally out of the question. There is no
longer any division of sentiment on this point, whatever doubts may have
been expressed in the beginning. Separation of the States would be
disastrous and fatal to all the fragmentary governments which would take
the place of this majestic Union. The nation instinctively feels that
its unity is its salvation--that disunion will be destructive of all its
long-cherished and glorious hopes. Its permanent peace, its prosperity
and progress, its greatness, its honor, and its influence among
civilized nations--all depend on its unity. These, which are the glory
of our country to every patriotic heart, were the stumbling blocks to
the conspirators. Slavery was ambitious and discontented with its
appointed lot; it was determined; it rushed headlong to its fatal
purpose. The nation stood in its path, and would not, could not get out
of the way. This is the central fact of the whole controversy. National
unity is on the one side--the disintegration and anarchy which slavery
demands, are on the other. These are the contending forces; they are
engaged in mortal combat, and one or the other must be utterly
overthrown and destroyed. Slavery must succumb and consent to disappear,
or the Union