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 loathe 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.