Then and thereby the assailants
of the government began the conflict of arms, without a gun in sight or
in expectancy to return their fire, save only the few in the fort sent
to that harbor years before for their own protection, and still ready to
give that protection in whatever was lawful.... 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 cannot maintain its
territorial integrity against its own domestic foes."
With his singular felicity of statement, he analyzed and refuted the
sophism that secession was lawful and constitutional.
"This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from the
assumption that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining
to a State--to each State of our Federal Union. Our States have neither
more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the
Constitution--no one of them ever having been a State out of the
Union.... The States have their status in the Union, and they have no
other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against
law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately,
procured their independence and their liberty.
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