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, are the momentous
issues 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 loth 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 cords of memory, stretching from every
battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone
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.

JEFFERSON DAVIS,

OF MISSISSIPPI.' (BORN 1808, DIED 1889.)

INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MONTGOMERY, ALA., FEBRUARY 18, 1861.

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, FRIENDS,
AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:

Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history
of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the
consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter
and abolish governments whenever they become destructive to the ends
for which they were established. The declared compact of the Union
from which we have withdrawn was to establish justice, ensure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general
welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity; and when in the judgment of the sovereign States now
composing this Confederacy it has been perverted from the purposes for
which it was ordained, and ceased to answer the ends for which it was
established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that, so far
as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should
cease to exist. In this they merely asserted the right which the
Declaration of Independence of 1776 defined to be inalienable. Of the
time and occasion of this exercise they as sovereigns were the final
judges, each for himself. The impartial, enlightened verdict of mankind
will vindicate the rectitude of our conduct; and He who knows the hearts
of men will judge of the sincerity with which we labored to preserve the
go