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absurd is it to suppose that when different parties enter into a compact for certain purposes, either can disregard any one provision and expect nevertheless the other to observe the rest! * * A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other.
He said in a speech delivered at
Buffalo, N. Y., during the same year:
The question, fellow-citizens (and I put it to you as the real question)—the question is, Whether you and the rest of the people of the great State of New York and of all the States, will so adhere to the Union—will so enact and maintain laws to preserve that instrument—that you will not only remain in the Union yourselves, but permit your Southern brethren to remain in it and help perpetuate it.
How different is the language above quoted from
Mr. Webster in his
Capon Springs speech from the proposition as stated by
Mr. Lincoln in his first inaugural, when he says:
One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
But, what more could be expected of
Mr. Lincoln, when it is well known that he held that the relation of the States to the
Union was the same as that which the counties bear to the States of which they respectively form a part?
