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 this
dispute there is still 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, 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.