Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/263

 LINCOLN this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, are the momentous issues of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being your- selves the aggressors. You have no oath reg- istered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Tho pas- sion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of mem- ory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to ever^ living heart and hearth- stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angelg of our nature. 253
 * ' preserve, protect, and defend" it.