Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

[277] and the Union, and establishing an independent government as a free city,¹ admonished him, “because New York was deeply interested in the matter,” that his great duty was to so conduct public affairs as to preserve the Union. “New York,” said the Seceder, “is the child of the American Union. She has grown up under its maternal care, and been fostered by its maternal bounty, and we fear that if the Union dies, the present supremacy of New York will perish with it.” The President elect assured him that he should endeavor to do his duty. On the following day,

February 21, 1861.

he passed on through New Jersey to Philadelphia, declaring at Trenton, on the way, to the assembled legislators of that State, that he was “exceedingly anxious that the Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people” should be perpetuated. “I shall be most happy,” he said, “if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty and of this, his most chosen people, as the chosen instrument-also in the hands of the Almighty — for perpetuating the object of the great struggle” in which Washington and his compatriots were engaged.

Mr. Lincoln was in Philadelphia on Washington's birthday,

February 22.

and with his own hands, in the presence of an immense assemblage of the citizens, he raised the American flag high above the old State House, in which the Declaration of Independence was debated and signed almost eighty-five years before. The place and its hallowed associations suggested the theme of a brief speech, which he made a short time before raising the flag over the Hall wherein the great deed was done. “I have never had a feeling,” he said “politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that independence. I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept the Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the mother land, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time.² It was that which gave promise that, in due time, the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of men. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up this principle, I was about to say, I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.... My friends, I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.” Then, in beautiful contrast with the truculent speech of Davis at Montgomery a week earlier, in which that bold leader said that those who opposed himself and his fellow-conspirators, must expect “to smell ”