Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., Volume 27

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Page 11 - 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 the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it.
Page 27 - All quiet along the Potomac," they say, "Except now and then a stray picket Is shot as he walks on his beat, to and fro, By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
Page 11 - I shall have the most solemn one to " preserve, protect, and defend it." I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Page 251 - So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky...
Page 50 - Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
Page 74 - And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.
Page 79 - Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.
Page 73 - I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
Page 251 - And, doubtless, unto thee is given A life that bears immortal fruit In such great offices as suit The full-grown energies of heaven.

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