. 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 favoured 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
battle-field 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.

_Address at Utica, New York. February 18, 1861_

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have no speech to make to you, and no time to
speak in. I appear before you that I may see you, and that you may see
me; and I am willing to admit, that, so far as the ladies are concerned,
I have the best of the bargain, though I wish it to be understood that I
do not make the same acknowledgment concerning the men.

_From his First Message to Congress, at the Special Session. July 4,
1861_

... It is thus seen that the assault upon and reduction of Fort Sumter
was in no sense a matter of self-defence on the part of the assailants.
They well knew that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility
commit aggression upon them. They knew--they were expressly
notified--that the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of
the garrison was all which would on that occasion be attempted, unless
themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more. They knew that
this government desired to keep the garrison in the fort, not to assail
them, but merely to maintain visible possession, and thus to preserve
t