sent of a majority of the Republican party in the Senate and the House. But that party, most disastrously for the country, refused all compromise. How, indeed, could they accept any? That which the South demanded, and the Democratic and Conservative parties of the North and West were willing to grant, and which alone could avail to keep the peace and save the Union, implied a surrender of the sole vital element of the party and its platform, of the very principle, in fact, upon which it had just won the contest for the Presidency, not, indeed, by a majority of the popular vote - the majority was nearly a million against it but under the forms of the Constitution. Sir, the crime, the "high crime," of the Republican party was not so much its refusal to compromise, as its original organization upon a basis and doctrine wholly inconsistent with the stability of the Constitution and the peace of the Union. The President-elect was inaugurated; and now, if only the policy of coercion could be maintained, and war thus averted, time would do its work in the North and the South, and final peaceable adjustment and reunion be secured. Some time in March it was announced that the President had resolved to continue the policy of his predecessor, and even go a step further, and evacuate Sumter and the other Federal forts and arsenals in the seceded States. His own party acquiesced; the whole country rejoiced. The policy of non-coercion had triumphed, and for once, sir, in my life, I found myself in an immense majority. No man then pretended that a Union founded in consent could be cemented by force. Nay, more, the President and the Secretary of State went further. Said Mr. Seward, in an official diplomatic letter to Mr. Adams: "For these reasons, he (the President) would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs (the secessionists), namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest, although he were disposed to question that proposition. But, in fact, the President willingly accepts it as true. Only an imperial or despotic Government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State. This Federal republican system of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is most unfitted for such a labor." This, sir, was on the 10th of April, and yet on that very day the fleet was under sail for Charleston. The policy of peace had been abandoned. Collision followed; the militia were ordered out; civil war began. * * * Now, sir, on the 14th of April, I believed that coercion would bring on war; and war, disunion. More than that, I believed, what you all believe in your hearts to-day, that the South could never be conquered-never! And not that only, but I was satisfied - and you of the Abolition party have now proved it to the world—that the secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish * * * * * * slavery in the States. These were my convictions on the 14th of April. Had I changed them on the 15th, when I read the President's proclamation, I would have changed my public conduct also. But my convictions did not change. I thought that, if war was disunion on the 14th of April, it was equally disunion on the 15th, and at all times. Believing this, I could not, as an honest man, a Union man, and a patriot, lend an active support to the war; and I did not. I had rather my right arm were plucked from its socket and cast into eternal burnings than, with my convictions, to have thus defiled my soul with the guilt of moral perjury. Sir, I was not taught in that school which proclaims that "all is fair in politics." I loathe, abhor, and detest the execrable maxim. * * * Perish office, perish honors, perish life itself; but do the thing that is right, and do it like a man. * * * Certainly, sir, I could not doubt what he must suffer who dare defy the opinions and the passions, not to say the madness, of twenty millions of people. * I did not support the war; and to-day I bless God that not the smell of so much as one drop of its blood is upon my garments. Sir, I censure no brave man who rushed patriotically into this war; neither will I quarrel with any one, here or elsewhere, who gave to it an honest support. Had their convictions been mine, I, too, would doubtless have done as they did. With my convictions I could not. But I was a Representative. War existed by whose act no matter not by mine. The President, the Senate, the House, and the country all said that there should be war. * I belonged to that school of politics which teaches that, when we are at war, the Government I do not mean the Executive alone, but the Government is entitled to demand and have, without resistance, such number of men, and such amount of money and supplies generally, as may be necessary for the war, until an appeal can be had to the people. Before that tribunal alone, in the first instance, must the question of the continuance of the war be tried. This was Mr. Calhoun's opinion in the Mexican War. Speaking of that war in 1847, he said: Every Senator knows that I was opposed to the war; but none but myself knows the depth of that opposition. With my conception of its character and consequences, it was impossible for me to vote for it. But, after war was declared, by authority of the Government, I acquiesced in what I could not prevent, and what it was impossible for me to arrest; and I then felt it to be my duty to limit my effort to give such direction to the war as would, as far as possible, prevent the evils and dangers with which it threatened the country and its institutions." * * * * * * Sir, I adopt all this as my position and my defense, though, perhaps, in a civil war, I might fairly go further in opposition. I could not, with my con victions, vote men and money for this war, and I would not, as a Representative, vote against them. I meant that, without opposition, the President might take all the men and all the money he should demand, and then to hold him to a strict responsibility before the people for the results. Not believing the soldiers responsible for the war or its purposes or its consequences, I have never withheld my vote where their separate interests were concerned. But I have denounced from the beginning the usurpations and the infractions, one and all, of law and Constitution, by the President and those under him; their repeated and persistent arbitrary arrests, the suspension of habeas corpus, the violation of freedom of the mails, of the private house, of the press, and of speech, and all the other multiplied wrongs and outrages upon public liberty and private right, which have made this country one of the worst despotisms on earth for the past twenty months; and I will continue to rebuke and denounce them to the end; and the people, thank God, have at last heard and heeded, and rebuked them too. To the record and to time I appeal again for my justifi The Gettysburg Address. By ABRAHAM LINCOLN, of Illinois. OURSCORE AND SEVEN years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (Delivered at the battlefield, November 19, 1863.) |