Well, Mr. President, I have disavowed all intention on the part of the
Republican party to harm a hair of your heads anywhere. We hold to
no doctrine that can possibly work you an inconvenience. We have
been faithful to the execution of all the laws in which you have any
interest, as stands confessed on this floor by your own party, and as is
known to me without their confessions. It is not, then, that Mr. Lincoln
is expected to do any overt act by which you may be injured; you will
not wait for any; but anticipating that the Government may work an
injury, you say you will put an end to it, which means simply, that
you intend either to rule or ruin this Government. That is what your
complaint comes to; nothing else. We do not like your institution, you
say. Well, we never liked it any better than we do now. You might
as well have dissolved the Union at any other period as now, on that
account, for we stand in relation to it precisely as we have ever
stood; that is, repudiating it among ourselves as a matter of policy
and morals, but nevertheless admitting that where it is out of our
jurisdiction, we have no hold upon it, and no designs upon it.
Then, sir, as there is nothing in the platform on which Mr. Lincoln was
elected of which you complain, I ask, is there anything in the character
of the President-elect of which you ought to complain? Has he not lived
a blameless life? Did he ever transgress any law? Has he ever committed
any violation of duty of which the most scrupulous can complain? Why,
then, your suspicions that he will? I have shown that you have had the
government all the time until, by some misfortune or maladministration,
you brought it to the very verge of destruction, and the wisdom of the
people had discovered that it was high time that the scepter should
depart from you, and be placed in more competent hands; I say that this
being so, you have no constitutional right to complain; especially when
we disavow any intention so to make use of the victory we have won as to
injure you at all.
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