First Inaugural Address | Page 5

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, 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
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, cannot 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