Why should there not be a patient confidence in the
ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in
the world? In our present differences is either party without faith of
being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of Nations, with his eternal
truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the
South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment
of this great tribunal of the American people.
By the frame of the government under which we live,
this same people have wisely given their public servants but little
power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return
of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the
people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any
extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the
government in the short space of four years.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well
upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
If there be an 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.
LINCOLN, FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MARCH 4, 1861.