And while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of
Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much
safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to
and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate
any of them trusting to find impunity in having them held to be
unconstitutional.
It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a
President under our National Constitution. During that period
fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in
succession, administered the Executive branch of the Government.
They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great
success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the
same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under
great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal Union,
heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.
I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the
Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is
implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national
governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a
provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to
execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and
the Union will endure forever-it being impossible to destroy it except
by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a Government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made
it? One party to a contract may violate it-break it, so to speak,
but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual, confirmed by the
history of the Union itself.
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