JULY 4, 1861:
President
Lincoln delivers a “Special Message To Congress” on this, America’s 85th
Independence Day. After this speech, Congress authorizes calling up 500,000
more men. The speech reads in part:
“Fellow-Citizens
of the Senate and House of Representatives:
Having been convened on an extraordinary occasion, as authorized by the
Constitution, your attention is not called to any ordinary subject of
legislation.
At the beginning of the present Presidential term, four months ago, the
functions of the Federal Government were found to be generally suspended within
the several States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,
and Florida, excepting only those of the Post-Office Department…
Within these
States all the forts, arsenals, dockyards, custom-houses, and the like,
including the movable and stationary property in and about them, had been
seized and were held in open hostility to this Government…
The forts remaining in the possession of the Federal Government in and near
these States were either besieged or menaced by warlike preparations…
Officers of the Federal Army and
Navy had resigned in great numbers, and of those resigning a large proportion
had taken up arms against the Government. Simultaneously and in connection with
all this the purpose to sever the Federal Union was openly avowed. In
accordance with this purpose, an ordinance had been adopted in each of these
States declaring the States respectively to be separated from the National
Union. A formula for instituting a combined government of these States had been
promulgated, and this illegal organization, in the character of Confederate
States, was already invoking recognition, aid, and intervention from foreign
powers…
Finding this condition of things and believing it to be an imperative duty
upon the incoming Executive to prevent, if possible, the consummation of such
attempt to destroy the Federal Union, a choice of means to that end became
indispensable. This choice was made, and was declared in the inaugural address.
The policy chosen looked to the exhaustion of all peaceful measures before a
resort to any stronger ones. It sought only to hold the public places and
property not already wrested from the Government and to collect the revenue,
relying for the rest on time, discussion, and the ballot box. It promised a
continuance of the mails at Government expense to the very people who were
resisting the Government, and it gave repeated pledges against any disturbance
to any of the people or any of their rights…
And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It
presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional
republic, or democracy—a government of the people by the same people—can or can
not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes…
It forces
us to ask, Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a
government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or
too weak to maintain its own existence?...
This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union it is a
struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government
whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights
from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford
all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to
partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of
the Government for whose existence we contend…
Our popular Government has often been called an experiment. Two points in
it our people have already settled—the successful establishing and the
successful administering of it. One still remains—its successful maintenance
against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to
demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also
suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of
bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided there
can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful
appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections. Such will be a
great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election
neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the
beginners of a war…
The Constitution provides, and all the States have accepted the provision,
that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
republican form of government." But if a State may lawfully go out of the
Union, having done so it may also discard the republican form of government; so
that to prevent its going out is an indispensable means to the end of
maintaining the guaranty mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory
the indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory…
And having thus
chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust
in God and go forward without fear and with manly hearts.”
