itimate defense against kidnapping; while suggesting that whatever
slaves South Carolina had lost from this cause were offset by
Massachusetts black seamen enslaved in her ports. Then he took up the
matter of disunion. "The question now is, Shall a reactionary spirit,
unfriendly to liberty, be permitted to subvert democratic republican
government organized under constitutional forms?... The men who own and
till the soil, who drive the mills, and hammer out their own iron and
leather on their own anvils and lapstones ... are honest, intelligent,
patriotic, independent, and brave. They know that simple defeat in an
election is no cause for the disruption of a government. They know that
those who declare that they will not live peaceably within the Union do
not mean to live peaceably out of it. They know that the people of all
sections have a right, which they intend to maintain, of free access
from the interior to both oceans, and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico,
and of the free use of all the lakes and rivers and highways of
commerce, North, South, East and West. They know that the Union means
peace and unfettered commercial intercourse from sea to sea and from
shore to shore; that it secures us against the unfriendly presence or
possible dictation of any foreign power, and commands respect for our
flag and security for our trade. And they do not intend, nor will they
ever consent, to be excluded from these rights which they have so long
enjoyed, nor to abandon the prospect of the benefits which humanity
claims for itself by means of their continued enjoyment in the future.
Neither will they consent that the continent shall be overrun by the
victims of a remorseless cupidity, and the elements of danger increased
by the barbarizing influences which accompany the African slave trade.
Inspired by the ideas and emotions which commanded the fraternization of
Jackson and Webster on another great occasion of public danger, the
people of Massachusetts, confiding in the patriotism of their brethren
in other States, accept this issue, and respond in the words of Jackson,
'The Federal Union, it must be preserved.'... We cannot turn aside, and
we will not turn back."

The crowded, anxious, hurrying months, brought the 4th of March, and
Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President. His speeches on his way to
the capital,--pacific, reassuring, but firm for national unity and
liberty,--had in a degree brought him into touch with the m