"But the Union, in any event, will not be dissolved. We don't want to
dissolve it, and if you attempt it we won't let you. With the purse and
sword, the army, the navy, and the treasury in our hands and at our
command, you could not do it. This government would be very weak indeed
if a majority with a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled
treasury could not preserve itself, when attacked by an unarmed,
undisciplined minority. All this talk about the dissolution of the
Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve the
Union; you shall not."

These words were prophetic of the condition of the country and of his
own policy four or five years later. But he apparently did not
apprehend that an unscrupulous administration might steal the army and
the munitions of war, scatter the navy, and empty the treasury.

On the 10th of December Lincoln spoke at a republican banquet in
Chicago. It was after the election, after Buchanan's supercilious
message to congress. The purpose of the speech was to forecast the
future of the young party. The following quotations may be read with
interest:

"He [Buchanan, in his message to congress] says the people did it. He
forgets that the 'people,' as he complacently calls only those who
voted for Buchanan, are in a minority of the whole people by about four
hundred thousand votes.... All of us who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan,
taken together, are a majority of four hundred thousand. But in the
late contest we were divided between Fremont and Fillmore. Can we not
come together for the future? Let every one who really believes, and is
resolved, that free society is not and shall not be a failure, and who
can conscientiously declare that in the past contest he has done only