Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/325

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 261 greatest moderation of speech and feeling, the in tention of the government to maintain its authority and to hold the places under its jurisdiction. He made an elaborate and unanswerable argument against the legality as well as the justice of seces sion, and further showed, with convincing clearness, that peaceful secession was impossible. &quot;Can aliens make treaties,&quot; he said, &quot;easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully en forced between aliens than laws can among friends ? Suppose you go to war; you cannot fight always, and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.&quot; He pleaded for peace in a strain of equal tenderness and dignity, and in closing he said: &quot;In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have a most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.&quot; This speech profoundly affected the public opinion of the north; but in the excited state of sentiment that then controlled the south it naturally met only contempt and defiance in that section. A few weeks later the inevitable war began, in an attack upon Fort Sumter by the secessionists of