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 loth to close.
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