.

DELIVERED AT CHICAGO, MAY 1ST, 1861.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I thank you for the kind terms in which you have been
pleased to welcome me. I thank the Committee and citizens of Chicago for
this grand and imposing reception. I beg you to believe that I will not
do you nor myself the injustice to believe this magnificent ovation is
personal homage to myself. I rejoice to know that it expresses your
devotion to the Constitution, the Union, and the flag of our country.
(Cheers.)

I will not conceal gratification at the uncontrovertible test this vast
audience presents--that what political differences or party questions
may have divided us, yet you all had a conviction that when the country
should be in danger, my loyalty could be relied on. That the present
danger is imminent, no man can conceal. If war must come--if the bayonet
must be used to maintain the Constitution--I can say before God my
conscience is clean. I have struggled long for a peaceful solution of
the difficulty. I have not only tendered those States what was theirs of
right, but I have gone to the very extreme of magnanimity.

The return we receive is war, armies marched upon our capital,
obstructions and dangers to our navigation, letters of marque to invite
pirates to prey upon our commerce, a concerted movement to blot out the
United States of America from the map of the globe. The question is, Are
we to maintain the country of our fathers, or allow it to be stricken
down by those who, when they can no longer govern, threaten to destroy?

What cause, what excuse do disunionists give us for breaking up the best
Government on which the sun of heaven ever shed its rays? They are
dissatisfied with the result of a Presidential election. Did they never
get beaten before? Are we to resort to the sword when we get defeated at
the ballot box? I understand it that the voice of the people expressed
in the mode appointed by the Constitution must command the obedience of
every citizen. They assume, on the election of a particular candidate,
that their rights are not safe in the Union. What evidence do they
present of this? I defy any man to show any act on which it is based.
What act has been omitted to be done? I appeal to these assembled
thousands that so far as the constitutional rights of the Southern
States, I will say the constitutional rights of slaveholders, are
concerned, nothing has been done, and nothing omitted, of which they can
complain.

There has ne