Abraham Lincoln

To humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy.

Public safety requires strict enforcement of this article.

It was my intention, as shown by my letter of June 20, 1861, to appoint Hon. James H. Lane, of Kansas, a brigadier-general of United States Volunteers, in anticipation of the act of Congress since passed for raising such volunteers;

Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war.

It is worthy of note that while in this, the government's hour of trial, large numbers of those in the army and navy who have been favoured with the offices have resigned and proved false to the hand which had pampered them, not one common…

Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one signed by Washington, they omit "We, the people," and substitute "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States." Why?

Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of independence in which, unlike the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words, "all men are created equal." Why?

Whoever in any section proposes to abandon such a government, would do well to consider in deference to what principle it is that he does it; what better he is likely to get in its stead; whether the substitute will give, or be intended to…

It may be affirmed without extravagance that the free institutions we enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people, beyond any example in the world.

The principle itself is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can stand.

If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go, or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.

Again, if one State may secede, so may another; and when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts.

Whatever concerns the whole world should be confided to the whole--to the General Government; while whatever concerns only the State should be left exclusively to the State.

The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty.

If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution.

The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status.

Would it be far wrong to define it "a political community without a political superior?" Tested by this, no one of our States, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty.

Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the States; but the word is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions.

Having never been States, either in substance or name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State-Rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself?

The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the Articles of Confederation two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual, is most conclusive.

Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.

The sophism itself is that any State of the Union may consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State.

They invented an ingenious sophism which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union.

In a word, the people will save their government, if the government itself will do its part only indifferently well.