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.

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.

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.

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.

Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.

Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people?

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…

Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

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.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

By the frame of the government under which we live, this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very…

If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people.

His duty is to administer the present government, as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States.

The foreign slave-trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived, without restriction, in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.