American Eloquence, Volume IV | Page 8

law, I have no objections to its being made express and irrevocable.'
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? 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 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, the 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 this dispute
there is still 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, are the momentous issues 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 loth 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 cords of memory, stretching from every
battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth-stone 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.

JEFFERSON DAVIS,
OF MISSISSIPPI.' (BORN 1808, DIED 1889.)
INAUGURAL ADDRESS, MONTGOMERY, ALA., FEBRUARY 18,
1861.
GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS OF THE CONFEDERATE
STATES OF AMERICA, FRIENDS, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS:
Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the
history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest
upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people
to alter and abolish governments whenever they become destructive to
the ends for which they were established. The declared compact of the
Union from which we have withdrawn was to establish justice, ensure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity; and when in the judgment of the sovereign States now
composing this Confederacy it has been perverted from the purposes
for which it was ordained, and ceased to answer the ends for which it
was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that, so far
as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should
cease to exist. In this they merely asserted the right which the
Declaration of Independence of 1776 defined to be inalienable. Of the
time and occasion of this exercise they as sovereigns were the final

judges, each for himself. The impartial, enlightened verdict of mankind
will vindicate the rectitude of our conduct; and He who knows the
hearts of men will judge of the sincerity with which we labored to
preserve the government of our fathers in its spirit.
The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has
been affirmed and reaffirmed in