732 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



shall have been acted upon, is hereby earnestly renew- 

 ed. Such would be only an advance part of the plan, 

 and the same arguments apply to both. 



This plan is recommended as a means, not in exclu- 

 sion of, but additional to, all others for restoring and 

 preserving the national authority throughout the Union. 

 The subject is presented exclusively in its economical 

 aspect. The plan would, I am confident, secure peace 

 more speedily, and maintain it more permanently, than 

 can be done by force alone ; while all it would cost, 

 considering amounts, and manner of payment, and 

 times of payment, would be easier paid than will be the 

 additional cost of the war, if we rely solely upon force. 

 It is much very much that it would cost no blood 

 at all. 



The plan is proposed as permanent constitutional law. 

 It cannot become such without the concurrence of, first, 

 two-thirds of Congress, and afterward three-fourths of 

 the States. The requisite three-fourths of the States 

 will necessarily include seven of the Slave States. 

 Their concurrence, if obtained, will give assurance of 

 their severally adopting emancipation, at no very dis- 

 tant day, upon the new constitutional terms. This as- 

 surance would end the struggle now, and save the 

 Union forever. 



I do not forget the gravity which should character- 

 ize a paper addressed to the Congress of the nation by 

 the Chief Magistrate of the nation. Nor do I forget 

 that some of you are my seniors ; nor that many of you 

 have more experience than I in the conduct of public 

 affairs. Yet I trust that, in view of the great respon- 

 sibility resting upon me, you will perceive no want of 

 respect to yourselves in any undue earnestness I may 

 seem to display. 



Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopt- 

 ed, would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expend- 

 iture of money and of blood? Is it doubted that it 

 would restore the national authority and national pros- 

 perity, and perpetuate both indefinitely ? Is it doubted 

 that we here Congress and Executive can secure its 

 adoption ? Will not the good people respond to a uni- 

 ted and earnest appeal from us ? Can we, can they, 

 by any other means, so certainly or so speedily assure 

 these vital objects ? We can succeed only by concert. 

 It is not " can any of us imagine better ? " but " can 

 we all do better?" Object whatsoever is possible, 

 still the question recurs, "can we do better?" The 

 dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy 

 present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and 

 we must rise with the occasion. As our case is* new, 

 so we must think anew, and act anew. We must 

 disenthral ourselves, and then we shall save our 

 country. 



Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of 

 this Congress and this Administration will be remem- 

 bered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance 

 or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The 

 fiery trial through which we pass will light us down 

 in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say 

 we are for the Union, The world will not forget that 

 we say this. We know how to save the Union. The 

 world knows we do know how to save it. We even 

 we here hold the power and bear the responsibility. 

 In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to 

 the free honorable alike in what we give and what we 

 preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last 

 best hope of earth. Other means may succeed ; this 

 could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, 

 just a way which, if followed, the world wUl forever 

 applaud and God must forever bless. 



DECEMBER 1, 1862. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



Inaugural Address of JEFFERSON DAVIS on en- 

 tering upon his duties as President of the 

 Confederate States under the "Permanent 

 Constitution," Feb. 22, 1862. 

 FELLOW CITIZENS : On this the birthday of the man 

 most identified with the establishment of American in- 

 dependence, and beneath the monument erected to 



commemorate his heroic virtues and those of his com- 

 patriots, we have assembled to usher into existence 

 the permanent Government of the Confederate States. 

 Through this instrumentality, under the favor of Di- 

 vine Providence, we hope to perpetuate the principles 

 of our Revolutionary fathers. The day, the memory 

 and the purpose seem fitly associated. 



It is with mingled feelings of humility and pride 

 that I appear to take, in the presence of the people and 

 before high Heaven, the oath prescribed as a qualifi- 

 cation for the exalted station to which the unanimous 

 voice of the people has called me. Deeply sensible of 

 all that is implied by this manifestation of the people's 

 confidence, I am yet more profoundly impressed by the 

 vast responsibility of the office, and humbly feel my 

 own unworthiness. 



In return for their kindness I can only offer assur- 

 ances of the gratitude with which it is received, and 

 can but pledge a zealous devotion of every faculty to 

 the service of those who have chosen me as their 

 Chief Magistrate. 



When a long course of class legislation, directed not 

 to the general welfare but to the aggrandizement of 

 the Northern section of the Union, culminated in a 

 warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern 

 States when the dogmas of a sectional party, sub- 

 stituted for the provisions of the constitutional com- 

 pact, threatened to destroy the sovereign rights of the 

 States, six of those States, withdrawing from the 

 Union, confederated together to exercise the right and 

 perform the duty of instituting a Government which 

 would better secure the liberties for the preservation 

 of which that Union was established. ' 



Whatever of hope some may have entertained that a 

 returning sense of justice would remove the danger 

 with which our rights were threatened, and render it 

 possible to preserve the Union of the Constitution, 

 must have been dispelled by_ the malignity and bar- 

 barity of the Northern States in the prosecution of the 

 existing war. The confidence of the most hopeful 

 among us must have been destroyed by the disregard 

 they have recently exhibited for all the time-honored 

 bulwarks of civil and religious liberty. Bastiles filled 

 with prisoners, arrested without civil process or in- 

 dictment duly found ; the writ of habeas corpus sus- 

 pended by Executive mandate ; a State Legislature 

 controlled by the imprisonment of members whose 

 avowed principles suggested to the Federal Executive 

 that there might be another added to the list of Seceded 

 States ; elections held under threats of a military pow- 

 er ; civil officers, peaceful citizens, and gentle women 

 incarcerated for opinion's sake, proclaimed the inca- 

 pacity of our late associates to administer a Govern- 

 ment as free, liberal, and humane as that established 

 for our common use. 



For proof of the sincerity of our purpose to maintain 

 our ancient institutions we may point to the Constitu- 

 tion of the Confederacy and the laws enacted under 

 it, as well as to the fact that through all the necessities 

 of an unequal struggle there has oeen no act on our 

 part to impair personal liberty, or the freedom of 

 speech, of thought, or of the press. The courts have 

 been open, the judicial functions fully executed, and 

 every right of the peaceful citizen maintained as secure- 

 ly as if a war of invasion had not disturbed the land. 



The people of the States now confederated became 

 convinced that the Government of the United States 

 had fallen into the hands of a sectional majority, who 

 would pervert that most sacred of all trusts to the 

 destruction of the rights which it was pledged to pro- 

 tect. They believed that to remain longer in the 

 Union would subject them to a continuance of dis- 

 paraging discrimination, submission to which would 

 be inconsistent with their welfare, and intolerable to a 

 proud people. They therefore determined to sever 

 its bonds and establish a new Confederacy for them- 

 selves. 



The experiment instituted by our Revolutionary 

 fathers, of a voluntary union of sovereign States for 

 purposes specified in a solemn compact, had been per- 

 verted by those who, feeling power and forgetting 



