OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 193 
was formed for South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mis- 
sissippi, Louisiana and Texas, known as the Confederate States 
of America, with JEFFERSON Davis of Mississippi as president. 
Mr. Lincoin kept his own counsel and in his inaugural address 
treated the secession as a nullity. He declared the Union perpetu- 
ate and inviolate, and announced the government’s intention to 
maintain its authority. He closed with the following strain of 
peace and dignity: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-coun- 
trymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. 
The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict 
without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no oath regis- 
tered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have a 
most solemn one to preserve it.” 
The attack on Sumter was the southern answer, and hostilities 
too detailed for discussion here were entered upon. Of Mr. Lin- 
COLN’s measures, history records the wisdom. To the constant 
pressure of the abolitionists to make slavery the chief issue, he 
responded that “My paramount duty is to save the Union, and 
not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union 
without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by 
freeing all slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing 
some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” Eventually 
the emancipation measure became a practical source for weaken- 
ing the enemy resistance, and he gladly published the necessary 
proclamation, January 1, 1863. The following fall he urged the 
necessity of a constitutional amendment to back his decree, and 
on January 31, 1865, the 13th amendment was finally adopted. 
His careful diplomacy in the questions involving European ngq- 
tions, (ably seconded by his Secretary of State and former politi- 
cal rival, Mr. Seward), his strength on the draft question for mili- 
tary service, and his second inaugural address, stood as bright 
lights in the path of those devoted lovers of the Union who could 
not see that the sands of time were then drifting in their direction. 
