Abraham Lincoln
First Inaugural Address
Monday, March 4, 1861

Fellow-Citizens of the United States:

IN compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear 
before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath 
prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the 
President "before he enters on the execution of this office."

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those 
matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or 
excitement.

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States 
that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and 
their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never 
been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample 
evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to 
their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of 
him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches 
when I declare that - I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to 
interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it 
exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no 
inclination to do so.

Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I 
had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted 
them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my 
acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and 
emphatic resolution which I now read:Resolved, That the maintenance 
inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each 
State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to 
its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on 
which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and 
we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any 
State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of 
crimes.

I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the 
public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is 
susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to 
be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, 
too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution 
and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States 
when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause - as cheerfully to one 
section as to another.

There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from 
service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the 
Constitution as any other of its provisions:No person held to service 
or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, 
shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged 
from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the 
party to whom such service or labor may be due.

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who 
made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the 
intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear 
their support to the whole Constitution - to this provision as much as 
to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come 
within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are 
unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could 
they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of 
which to keep good that unanimous oath?

There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be 
enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference 
is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can 
be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it 
is done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall 
go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be 
kept?

Again: In any law upon this subject ought not all the safeguards of 
liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, 
so that a free man be not in any case surrendered as a slave? And might 
it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement 
of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that "the citizens 
of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of 
citizens in the several States"?

I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no 
purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical 
rules; 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. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It 
was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was 
matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It 
was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States 
expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the 
Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the 
declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was 
"to form a more perfect Union."

But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States 
be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the 
Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can 
lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that 
effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or 
States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary 
or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the 
Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, 
as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of 
the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem 
to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as 
practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall 
withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the 
contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as 
the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend 
and maintain itself.

In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there 
shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The 
power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the 
property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the 
duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, 
there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the 
people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior 
locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent 
resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no 
attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. 
While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the 
exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating 
and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for 
the time the uses of such offices.

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts 
of the Union. So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that 
sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and 
reflection. The course here indicated will be followed unless current 
events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper, 
and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised, 
according to circumstances actually existing and with a view and a hope 
of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of 
fraternal sympathies and affections.

That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy 
the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will 
neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word 
to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak?

Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our 
national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, 
would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you 
hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any 
portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, 
while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones 
you fly from, will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?

All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights can 
be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right plainly written in the 
Constitution has been denied? I think not. Happily, the human mind is 
so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. 
Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written 
provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere 
force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly 
written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify 
revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is 
not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are 
so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties 
and prohibitions, in the Constitution that controversies never arise 
concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision 
specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical 
administration. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of 
reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible 
questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by 
State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress 
prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not 
expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The 
Constitution does not expressly say.

From questions of this class spring all our constitutional 
controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. 
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the 
Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing 
the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority 
in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent 
which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own 
will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by 
such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new 
confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as 
portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who 
cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper 
of doing this.

Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose 
a new union as to produce harmony only and prevent renewed secession?

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A 
majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, 
and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions 
and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever 
rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity 
is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is 
wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy 
or despotism in some form is all that is left.

I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional 
questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that 
such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit 
as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very 
high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other 
departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that 
such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect 
following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance 
that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, 
can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At 
the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of 
the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be 
irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they 
are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the 
people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent 
practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent 
tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the 
judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases 
properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others 
seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.

One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be 
extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be 
extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave 
clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the 
foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can 
ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly 
supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry 
legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I 
think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases 
after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave 
trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without 
restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially 
surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.

Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our 
respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall 
between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the 
presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of 
our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and 
intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is 
it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more 
satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties 
easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully 
enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to 
war, you can not fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides 
and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, 
as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit 
it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can 
exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their 
revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can not be ignorant 
of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of 
having the National Constitution amended. While I make no 
recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority 
of the people over the whole subject, to be exercised in either of the 
modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing 
circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being 
afforded the people to act upon it. I will venture to add that to me 
the convention mode seems preferable, in that it allows amendments to 
originate with the people themselves, instead of only permitting them 
to take or reject propositions originated by others, not especially 
chosen for the purpose, and which might not be precisely such as they 
would wish to either accept or refuse. I understand a proposed 
amendment to the Constitution - which amendment, however, I have not 
seen - has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government 
shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, 
including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of 
what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular 
amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be 
implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made 
express and irrevocable.

The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and 
they have referred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the 
States. The people themselves can do this if also they choose, but the 
Executive as such has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer 
the present Government as it came to his hands and to transmit it 
unimpaired by him to his successor.

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.

Abraham Lincoln
Second Inaugural Address
Saturday, March 4, 1865

Fellow-Countrymen:

AT this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office 
there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the 
first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued 
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during 
which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every 
point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention 
and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be 
presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly 
depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I 
trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope 
for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were 
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all 
sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered 
from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, 
urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war - 
seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both 
parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let 
the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it 
perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed 
generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. 
These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew 
that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, 
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the 
insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government 
claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial 
enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or 
the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that 
the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict 
itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result 
less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to 
the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem 
strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us 
judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be 
answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His 
own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must 
needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense 
cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those 
offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, 
having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, 
and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe 
due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any 
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living 
God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, 
that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God 
wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two 
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must 
be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the 
right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who 
shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all 
which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves 
and with all nations.

