ith indescribable pathos, majesty and beauty, for the
very Union whose existence their words had threatened. "Physically
speaking, we [the North and South] cannot separate. We cannot remove our
respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall
between them. Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make
laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws
can among friends? Suppose you go to war? You cannot fight always, and
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. 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. I am
loath 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 patriotic 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."

But the great debate through arguments was ended. Henceforth, the appeal
was to arms.

VIII

REASONS FOR SECESSION: SOUTHERN LEADERS

The seven debates between Lincoln and Douglas convinced both the North
and the South: but, confirming the one for union and liberty, it
confirmed the other for independence and slavery. Lincoln convinced the
North that the Union could not endure permanently half slave and half
free; on the other hand, the South saw just as clearly that the Union,
if it endured, must become all free or all slave. When the men of
light and leading in the North fully understood Lincoln's
"House-divided-against-itself" speech, they went over to the Republican
party, and nominated and elected Lincoln president, that he might put
slavery in a position of gradual extinction, by forbidding its future
growth. The South acted with even greater energy and decision, by making
ready to secede, and arming her citizens for the defense of slavery. The
great debate, through words, had lasted thirty years; now the South
made its appeal to regiments