Existing comment:
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 battle-field, 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.
To Abraham Lincoln, the Union began in 1776 with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. There was never a question in his mind that the political Union of States was a legal entity. It was, therefore, illegal for any one state, or confederacy of states, to dissolve the Union. Lincoln never wavered in his determination to use any and all means necessary to preserve the Union and keep the promise of liberty and freedom as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and realized through the Constitution.
States had certain powers, but the Federal Government was responsible for maintaining the "inalienable rights" of all Americans. |