e three may be the
best, is no proper question. All are better than either; and all of
right belong to that people and their successors for ever. True to
themselves, they will not ask where a line of separation shall be, but
will vow rather that there shall be no such line. Nor are the marginal
regions less interested in these communications to and through them to
the great outside world. They too, and each of them, must have access to
this Egypt of the west, without paying toll at the crossing of any
national boundary.

Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from the
land we inhabit, not from our national homestead. There is no possible
severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us. In
all its adaptations and aptitudes, it demands union and abhors
separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however much of
blood and treasure the separation might have cost....

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this
Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal
significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery
trial through which we pass will light us down, in honour or dishonour,
to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will
not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world
knows we do know how to save it.

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving
freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free,--honourable alike
in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose
the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not
fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just,--a way which, if
followed, the world will for ever applaud, and God must for ever bless.

_Emancipation Proclamation. January 1, 1863_

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by
the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the
following, to wit:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any
State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be
in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward,
and for ever free; and the Executive Government of the United States,
i