14 elemental fragments, at the will of any part or parts, at any time the latter choose, what possible secarity have we from impending anarchy and ruin at all times I What confidence have we in order! What trust can we place in the integrity of commercial, educational, manufacturing or private transactions ! What trust can the civilized world place in the integrity of public or governmental obligations I What confidence or respect can we command among the community of great nations! What reliance in the harmony of all relations of life I In fine, what certainty in government and protection for life, limb, property, wife, children, home, family—for all that man holds dear ! We cannot sit upon such a mine ready at any time to burst upon us unawares. We cannot submit to see this nation, that rose as a sun to spread the light of free institutions all round the earth, blaze across the firmament of History like a mere meteor, and before the astounded, disappointed gaze of the world explode with frightful report and leave a deeper darkness over land and sea ! It is with us, say the North, not union and the tyranny of one part over another, but union of a one free country and that liberty in it, which is consistent with order. It must be either such union with the liberty of order, or disunion and the tyranny of anarchy. We must have a kind of freedom—and if we have it not we must create and possess ourselves with such a freedom as shall be organized and permanent; not bask longer in an erratic, uncertain freedom ready to fly away in a cloud of turmoil which any neighborhood or state may stir up. In this great city of freedom, none shall be allowed to set his own house on fire, no, nor his neighbors’, whether such disposition be in the North or the South. We have now learned that incendiaries of all hues and shades and creeds are insufferable among us. Now, whatever you or I may think in this matter, that men nevertheless are differing honestly in opinion on the question, however misguided the one or the other side may be, it would be madness to deny. It seems to be, under Heaven, an irreconcilable difficulty except at arms. We have come to an inevitable open rupture on the construction of the Constitution—on the question of the
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