auguration of a President
under our National Constitution. During that period, fifteen different
and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession, administered the
Executive branch of the government. They have conducted it through many
perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope for
precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional
term of four years, under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of
the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.

I hold that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution,
the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not
expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is
safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its
organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the
express provisions of our National Government, and the Union will endure
forever--it being impossible to destroy it, except by some action not
provided for in the instrument itself.

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak; but does
it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that,
in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the history
of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It
was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774.

It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States
expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the
Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787, one of the
declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to
form a more perfect union."

But if destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the
States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before, the
Constitution having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

It follows, from these views, that no State, upon its own mere motion,
can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that
effect are legally void; and that acts of violence within any State or
States