Sumters the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the
pages of your Revolutionary history, will not abandon that Union to support
which so many of them fought, and bled, and died. I adjure you, as you
honor their memory, as you love the cause of freedom to which they
dedicated their lives, as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of
its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch
from the archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its
convention,--bid its members to reassemble and promulgate the decided
expression of your will, to remain in the path which alone can conduct you
to safety, prosperity, and honor;--tell them that compared to disunion, all
other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of
all;--declare that you will never take the field, unless the star-spangled
banner of your country shall float over you; that you will not be
stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the
authors of the first attack on the Constitution of your country,--its
destroyers you cannot be.

Fellow-citizens, the momentous case is before you. On your undivided
support of the Government depends the decision of the great question it
involves: whether our sacred Union will be preserved, and the blessings it
secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the
unanimity with which that decision will be expressed, will be such as to
inspire new confidence in republican institutions; and that the prudence,
the wisdom, and the courage, which it will bring to their defense, will
transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children. May the Great
Ruler of nations grant that the signal blessings with which He has favored
ours, may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded
and lost; and may His wise Providence bring those who have produced this
crisis, to see their folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife;
and inspire a returning veneration for that Union, which, if we may dare to