to _hurry_ any of you in hot haste to a step which you would
never take _deliberately_, that object will be frustrated by taking
time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now
dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the
sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new
Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change
either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the
right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for
precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm
reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still
competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty.

In _your_ hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in _mine_,
is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail
_you_. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.
_You_ have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while
_I_ shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend
it."

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds
of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every
battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all
over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again
touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

MARCH 4, 1861.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, _March 16, 1861_.

_To the Senate_:

The Senate has transmitted to me a copy of the message sent by my
predecessor to that body on the 21st day of February last, proposing to
take its advice on the subject of a proposition made by the British
Government through its minister here to refer the matter in controversy
between that Government and the Government of the United States to the
arbitrament of the King of Sweden and Norway, the King of the
Netherlands, or the Republic of the Swiss Confederation.

In that message my predecessor stated that he wished to submit to the
Senate the precise questions following, namely:

Will the Senate approve a treaty referring to either of the sovereign
powers above named the dispute now existing between the Governments of
the United States and Great Britain concerning the boundary line between
Vancouvers Island an