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institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to the balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend;1 and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.”
I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration.
I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States, when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause — as cheerfully to one section as to another.
The President referred to the
Fugitive Slave Act as constitutional, but suggested that it should have provisions that would throw around it “all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence,” so that “a free man be not in any case surrendered as a slave.”
He also suggested that it might be well to provide by law “for the enforcement of that clause in the
Constitution which guaranties that ‘ the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.’
” These “privileges and immunities” had not been fully enjoyed by citizens of the Free-labor States while in the Slave-labor States, for many years.
The President then spoke of the political construction and character of the
Republic.
“I hold,” he said,
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.
If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of a 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.
The Union is much older than the Constitution.
It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association, in 1774.
It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence, in 1776.
It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation, in 1778.
And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was, “to form a more perfect Union.”
But if the destruction of the Union, by one or by a part only of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before, the Constitution having lost the vital element of perpetuity.2
