It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a
President under our National Constitution. During that period
fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in
succession administered the executive branch of the Government.
They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with
great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter
upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years
under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the Federal
Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.
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.
Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as
a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who
made it? One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to
speak--but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by
the history of the Union itself.
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