object to _hurry_ any of you in hot haste to a step which you would
never take _deliberately_, that object will be frustrated by taking
time; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now
dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the
sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new
Administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change
either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the
right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for
precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm
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_,
is the momentous issue 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 loath 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 chords of memory, stretching from every
battlefield 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 better angels of our nature.

MARCH 4, 1861.