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

“ [72] of the contracting parties.¹ If this be so, the Confederacy is a rope of sandy to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into so many petty, jarring, and hostile republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility, whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course. By this process, a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks, which cost our fathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish.”

In these wise, truthful, and statesmanlike sentences the President cast off the restraints of the meshes of political and personal difficulty in which he was evidently entangled; and by so doing he gave unpardonable offense to the conspirators. With the freedom of will and judgment which that momentary relief gave him, and with a lofty conception of the dignity of the Republic and his own position, he continued:--“This Government is a great and powerful Government, invested with all the attributes of sovereignty over the special subjects to which its authority extends. Its framers never intended to implant in its bosom the seeds of its own destruction, nor were they, at its creation, guilty of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution. It was not intended by its framers to be the baseless fabric of a vision, which, at the touch of the enchanter, would vanish into thin air; but a substantial and mighty fabric, capable of resisting the slow decay of time, and of defying the storms of ages. Indeed, well may the zealous patriots of that day have indulged fears that a government of such high powers might violate the reserved rights of the States, and wisely did they adopt the rule of a strict construction of these powers to prevent danger. But they did not fear, nor had they any reason to imagine, that the Constitution would ever be so interpreted as to enable any State, by her own act, and without the consent of her sister States, to discharge her people from all or any of their Federal obligations.”

These were brave words, and the President had constitutional and popular power to follow them with corresponding brave actions. But a sense of restraint seems to have paralyzed his will, and while he declared that the forts and other public property must be protected, he yielded every thing to the conspirators by saying, in their own phraseology, that there was no power known to the Constitution to compel a “seceding State” to return to its allegiance. He saw no way in which a “subjugated State” could be governed afterward; and even if the National Government had the power to compel the obedience of a State, “would it be wise to exercise it, under the circumstances?” he asked. In the fraternal conflict that would ensue, a vast amount of blood and treasure would be expended, rendering future reconciliation impossible. He declared that the States were colleagues of one another; and if some of them, he said, “should conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon which they are now connected. If this view of the subject be as correct as I think it is,” he said, “then the Union must utterly perish at the moment ”