August 16, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the 28th episode of our Story of America Series, Dr. Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope, tells the story of Lincoln's First Inaugural Address...and how the newly minted president sought to keep a nation already splitting apart at the seams together, through his own rhetoric.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next another
installment of our series about Us, the Story of America series,
with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book
Land of Hope, Professor Bill McLay. The election of eighteen
sixties saw four major candidates compete against one another, with
(00:30):
Abraham Lincoln, a political newcomer, coming out victorious. Let's get
into the story. Take it away, Bill and short.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It was a mess. It would make the likelihood of
a Republican victory a probability. Lincoln one one hundred and
eighty electoral votes from all eighteen Free states, and only
from those states. He didn't get a single vote, a
(01:00):
single electoral vote from the South. It was the first
time a president had been elected on an entirely regional basis,
and some Southerners warned that such an precedent, such an
outcome in this election, would leave the South with no
choice but to secede from the Union, which of course
prompted the obvious question could a state leave the Union?
(01:23):
The compact theory of the Constitution, which so many Southerners
adhered to, provided a constitutional basis.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
For doing so.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
In their view, the Constitution was a compact and agreement
contract between and among the states, and that those states
had a right to withdraw from that compact in the
same way that any contract could be ended if a
party could state with reason the cause for ending it.
Many southers also believe deeply that any act of secession
(01:53):
would fall in line with the very tradition of the
American Revolution itself, which had been justified on the principle
that people have the right to overthrow or replace their
government if it doesn't reflect the consent of the government.
Immediately after the election, the state of South Carolina did
(02:15):
precisely that, and the reason for this decision, while the
justification for it was the election of Abrahamley. By eighteen
sixty one, six additional states Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Texas followed suit. By early February, they had formed
their own union, the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis
(02:38):
was elected president and Alexander Stevens of Georgia vice president.
The important state of Virginia, along with the other emper
South states, was on the fence.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Was it possible to keep those.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
States from joining the others Regrettably, President Buchanan, in the
remaining four months of his lame duck presidency, did nothing
to keep those states in the Union, and maybe there
was nothing that could have been done. One last desperate
(03:11):
measure was tried when Congress narrowly passed a constitutional amendment
that would have protected slavery where he had existed, something
even an anti slavery man like Lincoln supported. That's how desperate,
how bleak things looked. It spoke volumes.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
About the peril the nation faced.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
This amendment passed the House with ease and passed the
Senate by one vote just two days before Lincoln's inauguration.
Had it gone on to be ratified by the states,
it would have been our thirteenth Amendment. What a different
thirteenth amendment than the one we ended up actually having,
which abolished slavery. Lincoln wisely remained silent, owing full well
(04:01):
that momentous decisions lay ahead.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
There were so many questions before him. Was there a
way to prevent the Southern states from seceding?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
How far would he be willing to go to prevent it?
What principles might he be willing to abandon? And those
were the easy questions. What would he do if he
couldn't stop succession? Should he simply let the Southern States
leave the Union in peace without a fight, or should
he use military force to bring the Union back together?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Forcibly tough decisions, lonely decisions.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
As he assembled his cabinet, even those closest they were
not fully aware of his plans.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Perhaps he himself wasn't either. Many Americans do little to nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
About this tall man born in the back wins of Kentucky,
and he had no experience leading much of.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Anything of significance.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Indeed, until he was president, he never had any executive
experience at all.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
It wasn't well his first inaugular address in early March.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Of eighteen sixty one that Americans would finally eat hear
from their new president about his aids. Lincoln wasted no
time addressing the biggest issue of the day, and he
did it directly, addressing the South first, try his best
to adopt the tone of a peacemaker. Apprehension seems to
(05:25):
exist among the people of the Southern States, and by
the accession of a Republican administration, their property and their
peace and personal security are to be in danger.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Indeed, the most.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Ample evidence of 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 have no purpose, directly or indirectly, who interfere with
the institution of slavery the states.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Where it exists.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I believe I have no lawful right to do so,
and I have no inclination to do so. 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
(06:15):
to that balance of bower which the perfection and endurance
of our political fabric depend. The property, peace, and security
of no section are to be in anywise endangered by.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
The now incoming administration.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
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 from
whatever cause, as cheerfully.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
To one section as to another.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well, pretty decisive, but Lincoln was just getting started to
Lincoln then addressed the issue of secession, and here he
loses the tone of peace maker, and instead of not
the tone of the enforcer and righteous defender of the Constitution,
and the idea of a permanently united country. I hold that,
(07:13):
in contemplation of universal law out 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's saved to assert that no government proper ever add
a provision in its organic law for its own termination.
(07:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Not provided for in the instrument itself.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Again, if the United States be not a government proper,
but an association of states in the nature of contract,
merely candidate as a contract be peaceably unmade.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
By less than all of the parties made.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
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
(08:28):
fact by the Articles of Association is seventeen seventy four.
It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence
is seventeen seventy six. It was further matured and the
faith of all the then thirteen states expressed, plighted, and
engaged that it should be perpetual by the Articles of Confederation, and.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Finally is seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
One of the declared objects for ordating 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,
(09:16):
upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of them,
that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void,
that acts of violence within any state or states against
the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary
according to circumstances. You can certainly see from this text
(09:43):
what a good lawyer Lincoln was, how adept he was
at legal reasoning to support his position.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
on our American stories and we return to our American
stories in our Story of America series with Hillsdale College
(10:14):
professor and author of Land of Hope Bill McLay. When
we last left off, Bill was reading from Lincoln's first
inaugural address. Let's return to the story now.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
His tone pivots again back to Peacemaker Boat, And with
some great rhetorical questions thrown in for good measure about
the state of the Union and some who want to
destroy it. That there are persons in one section or
another who seek to destroy the Union at all events,
(10:47):
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
(11:12):
its hopes.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we
do it?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Will you hazard so desperate a step while there's any
possibility that any.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Will you while the certain ills you fly too are
greater than all the real ones you fly from? We
risk the Commission, 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.
(11:51):
The human mind is so constituted that no party can
reach to the audacity of doing this. Think if you
can of a single in in which a plainly written
provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by
the mere force of numbers of majorities should deprive a
minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in
(12:13):
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,
guarantees and prohibitions in the Constitution, the controversies never arise
(12:36):
concerning them. So now Lincoln goes to the heart of
the matter and addresses the issue of secession directly.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Plainly.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
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 the deliberate changes of popular
opinions and sentiments is the only true sovereign of a
free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to
(13:11):
anarchy or to despotism.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Unanimity is impossible.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
The rule of minority is a permanent arrangement, is only inadmissible,
so that rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in
self form is all that is left. And now Lincoln
goes on to describe the problem facing him in the
nation in very start and simple terms. One section of
(13:38):
our country beliefs 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 as forced, perhaps as any law can ever be,
(13:59):
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 if you break over in each, this I think
cannot be perfectly cure, and it would be worse In
both cases after the separation of the sections than before.
(14:22):
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 cannot separate. We cannot remove
our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable
(14:45):
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
cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face.
An intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
(15:06):
Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse for advantageous
or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make
treaties easier than friends can make laws?
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Can treaties be.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
More faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Suppose you go to war.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You cannot 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. And this is the masterly way in
which Lincoln closes things out. My countrymen, what and all
(15:56):
think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable
could be lost by taking time. If there be an
object to hurry any of you at hot haste to
a step which you would never take deliberately, that object
will be frustrated by taking time.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
But no good object could be frustrated by.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Such of you, as are now dissatisfied, still have the
old constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Your own framing under it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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's still no single good reason for precipitate action, Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity,
(16:50):
and a firm reliance on him who has never yet
forsaken this favored lad These are still competent to adjust
in the best way all our present difficulty in your hands,
my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mind, is the
momentous issue of civil war.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
The government will not assail you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I'm loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic
cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave
to every living heart and heartstone all over this broad land,
(17:58):
willly yet swell the corus of Union, but again touched
as surely they will be, by the better angels of
our nature.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
A beautiful speech.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
But this speech, as beautiful and brilliant as it was,
proved that sometimes rhetoric alone can't change arts and lines.
This is a divide that Lincoln inherited on his first
day of office, and it would soon manifested itself in
Lincoln's first crisis in office, the attack on Fort Sumter,
(18:33):
a Federal government installation on a small island in the
harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. It may have appeared to
be a defeat for the Union when, after more than
a day of constant bombardment, the fort was surrendered, But
Lincoln had adeptly drawn the South Carolinian secessionists into firing
(18:54):
the first shots of.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
The Civil War, and a terrific job on the production,
editing and storytelling by our own Monte Montgomery himself a
Hillsdale College graduate, and a special thanks to Professor Bill McLay.
I want to close with those final words. This speech
is so spectacular. We are not enemies but friends. We
must not be enemies. The story of Abraham Lincoln's first
(19:18):
inaugural and so much more here on our American stories,
And we continue with our American stories. Up next another
installment of our series about Us, the Story of America series,
with Hillsdale College professor and author of the terrific book
Land of Hope, Professor Bill McLay. The election of eighteen
sixties saw four major candidates compete against one another, with
(00:30):
Abraham Lincoln, a political newcomer, coming out victorious. Let's get
into the story. Take it away, Bill and short.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
It was a mess. It would make the likelihood of
a Republican victory a probability. Lincoln one one hundred and
eighty electoral votes from all eighteen Free states, and only
from those states. He didn't get a single vote, a
(01:00):
single electoral vote from the South. It was the first
time a president had been elected on an entirely regional basis,
and some Southerners warned that such an precedent, such an
outcome in this election, would leave the South with no
choice but to secede from the Union, which of course
prompted the obvious question could a state leave the Union?
(01:23):
The compact theory of the Constitution, which so many Southerners
adhered to, provided a constitutional basis.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
For doing so.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
In their view, the Constitution was a compact and agreement
contract between and among the states, and that those states
had a right to withdraw from that compact in the
same way that any contract could be ended if a
party could state with reason the cause for ending it.
Many southers also believe deeply that any act of secession
(01:53):
would fall in line with the very tradition of the
American Revolution itself, which had been justified on the principle
that people have the right to overthrow or replace their
government if it doesn't reflect the consent of the government.
Immediately after the election, the state of South Carolina did
(02:15):
precisely that, and the reason for this decision, while the
justification for it was the election of Abrahamley. By eighteen
sixty one, six additional states Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,
and Texas followed suit. By early February, they had formed
their own union, the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis
(02:38):
was elected president and Alexander Stevens of Georgia vice president.
The important state of Virginia, along with the other emper
South states, was on the fence.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Was it possible to keep those.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
States from joining the others Regrettably, President Buchanan, in the
remaining four months of his lame duck presidency, did nothing
to keep those states in the Union, and maybe there
was nothing that could have been done. One last desperate
(03:11):
measure was tried when Congress narrowly passed a constitutional amendment
that would have protected slavery where he had existed, something
even an anti slavery man like Lincoln supported. That's how desperate,
how bleak things looked. It spoke volumes.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
About the peril the nation faced.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
This amendment passed the House with ease and passed the
Senate by one vote just two days before Lincoln's inauguration.
Had it gone on to be ratified by the states,
it would have been our thirteenth Amendment. What a different
thirteenth amendment than the one we ended up actually having,
which abolished slavery. Lincoln wisely remained silent, owing full well
(04:01):
that momentous decisions lay ahead.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
There were so many questions before him. Was there a
way to prevent the Southern states from seceding?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
How far would he be willing to go to prevent it?
What principles might he be willing to abandon? And those
were the easy questions. What would he do if he
couldn't stop succession? Should he simply let the Southern States
leave the Union in peace without a fight, or should
he use military force to bring the Union back together?
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Forcibly tough decisions, lonely decisions.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
As he assembled his cabinet, even those closest they were
not fully aware of his plans.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Perhaps he himself wasn't either. Many Americans do little to nothing.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
About this tall man born in the back wins of Kentucky,
and he had no experience leading much of.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Anything of significance.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Indeed, until he was president, he never had any executive
experience at all.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
It wasn't well his first inaugular address in early March.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Of eighteen sixty one that Americans would finally eat hear
from their new president about his aids. Lincoln wasted no
time addressing the biggest issue of the day, and he
did it directly, addressing the South first, try his best
to adopt the tone of a peacemaker. Apprehension seems to
(05:25):
exist among the people of the Southern States, and by
the accession of a Republican administration, their property and their
peace and personal security are to be in danger.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
Indeed, the most.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Ample evidence of 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 have no purpose, directly or indirectly, who interfere with
the institution of slavery the states.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Where it exists.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I believe I have no lawful right to do so,
and I have no inclination to do so. 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
(06:15):
to that balance of bower which the perfection and endurance
of our political fabric depend. The property, peace, and security
of no section are to be in anywise endangered by.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
The now incoming administration.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
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 from
whatever cause, as cheerfully.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
To one section as to another.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Well, pretty decisive, but Lincoln was just getting started to
Lincoln then addressed the issue of secession, and here he
loses the tone of peace maker, and instead of not
the tone of the enforcer and righteous defender of the Constitution,
and the idea of a permanently united country. I hold that,
(07:13):
in contemplation of universal law out 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's saved to assert that no government proper ever add
a provision in its organic law for its own termination.
(07:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Not provided for in the instrument itself.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Again, if the United States be not a government proper,
but an association of states in the nature of contract,
merely candidate as a contract be peaceably unmade.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
By less than all of the parties made.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
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
(08:28):
fact by the Articles of Association is seventeen seventy four.
It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence
is seventeen seventy six. It was further matured and the
faith of all the then thirteen states expressed, plighted, and
engaged that it should be perpetual by the Articles of Confederation, and.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Finally is seventeen eighty seven.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
One of the declared objects for ordating 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,
(09:16):
upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of them,
that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void,
that acts of violence within any state or states against
the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary
according to circumstances. You can certainly see from this text
(09:43):
what a good lawyer Lincoln was, how adept he was
at legal reasoning to support his position.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
When we come back more of this remarkable story here
on our American stories and we return to our American
stories in our Story of America series with Hillsdale College
(10:14):
professor and author of Land of Hope Bill McLay. When
we last left off, Bill was reading from Lincoln's first
inaugural address. Let's return to the story now.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
His tone pivots again back to Peacemaker Boat, And with
some great rhetorical questions thrown in for good measure about
the state of the Union and some who want to
destroy it. That there are persons in one section or
another who seek to destroy the Union at all events,
(10:47):
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
(11:12):
its hopes.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
Would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we
do it?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Will you hazard so desperate a step while there's any
possibility that any.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence?
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Will you while the certain ills you fly too are
greater than all the real ones you fly from? We
risk the Commission, 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.
(11:51):
The human mind is so constituted that no party can
reach to the audacity of doing this. Think if you
can of a single in in which a plainly written
provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by
the mere force of numbers of majorities should deprive a
minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in
(12:13):
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,
guarantees and prohibitions in the Constitution, the controversies never arise
(12:36):
concerning them. So now Lincoln goes to the heart of
the matter and addresses the issue of secession directly.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
Plainly.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
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 the deliberate changes of popular
opinions and sentiments is the only true sovereign of a
free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to
(13:11):
anarchy or to despotism.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
Unanimity is impossible.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
The rule of minority is a permanent arrangement, is only inadmissible,
so that rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in
self form is all that is left. And now Lincoln
goes on to describe the problem facing him in the
nation in very start and simple terms. One section of
(13:38):
our country beliefs 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 as forced, perhaps as any law can ever be,
(13:59):
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 if you break over in each, this I think
cannot be perfectly cure, and it would be worse In
both cases after the separation of the sections than before.
(14:22):
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 cannot separate. We cannot remove
our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable
(14:45):
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
cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face.
An intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
(15:06):
Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse for advantageous
or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make
treaties easier than friends can make laws?
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Can treaties be.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
More faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Suppose you go to war.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
You cannot 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. And this is the masterly way in
which Lincoln closes things out. My countrymen, what and all
(15:56):
think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable
could be lost by taking time. If there be an
object to hurry any of you at hot haste to
a step which you would never take deliberately, that object
will be frustrated by taking time.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
But no good object could be frustrated by.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Such of you, as are now dissatisfied, still have the
old constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point, the laws of.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Your own framing under it.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
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's still no single good reason for precipitate action, Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity,
(16:50):
and a firm reliance on him who has never yet
forsaken this favored lad These are still competent to adjust
in the best way all our present difficulty in your hands,
my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mind, is the
momentous issue of civil war.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
The government will not assail you.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
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.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I'm loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic
cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave
to every living heart and heartstone all over this broad land,
(17:58):
willly yet swell the corus of Union, but again touched
as surely they will be, by the better angels of
our nature.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
A beautiful speech.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
But this speech, as beautiful and brilliant as it was,
proved that sometimes rhetoric alone can't change arts and lines.
This is a divide that Lincoln inherited on his first
day of office, and it would soon manifested itself in
Lincoln's first crisis in office, the attack on Fort Sumter,
(18:33):
a Federal government installation on a small island in the
harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. It may have appeared to
be a defeat for the Union when, after more than
a day of constant bombardment, the fort was surrendered, But
Lincoln had adeptly drawn the South Carolinian secessionists into firing
(18:54):
the first shots of.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
The Civil War, and a terrific job on the production,
editing and storytelling by our own Monte Montgomery himself a
Hillsdale College graduate, and a special thanks to Professor Bill McLay.
I want to close with those final words. This speech
is so spectacular. We are not enemies but friends. We
must not be enemies. The story of Abraham Lincoln's first
(19:18):
inaugural and so much more here on our American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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