Abraham Lincoln

Name: Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address
Author: Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

Summary

“Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address”, is a work by Abraham Lincoln. It explores elements such as minority, the United States and government.

Quotes from Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (Abraham Lincoln)

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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 a 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, 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. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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 ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ And should any one 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 citizen of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States?" ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also if 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? ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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 under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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, the American people. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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? ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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 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. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1907)

“ 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 wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other ”

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Source: Wikisource

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address

“ 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. ”

Abraham Lincoln

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Quotes from Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (Abraham Lincoln)

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