onstitutional Republic, a government of the people by
the same people, can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity
against its own domestic foes." The President presented this point
with elaboration. The question really involved, was "whether
discontented individuals, too few in number to control the
administration according to the organic law, can always, upon the
pretenses made in this case, or any other pretenses, or arbitrarily
without pretenses, break up the government, and thus practically
put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask,
_Is there in all Republics this inherent and fatal weakness?_ Must
a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its
own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?"

The President was severe upon Virginia and Virginians. He had made
earnest effort to save the State from joining the Rebellion. He
had held conferences with her leading men, and had gone so far on
the 13th of April as to address a communication, for public use in
Virginia, to the State convention then in session at Richmond, in
answer to a resolution of the convention asking him to define the
policy he intended to pursue in regard to the Confederate States.
In this he re-asserted the position assumed in his Inaugural, and
added that "if, as now appears to be true, an unprovoked assault
has been made on Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to
repossess it if I can, and the like places which had been seized
before the government was devolved upon me. I shall, to the best
of my ability, repel force by force." This letter was used to
inflame public sentiment in Virginia, and to hurl the State into
Secession through the agency of a Convention elected to maintain
the Union. Mr. Lincoln afterwards believed that the letter had
been obtained from him under disingenuous pretenses and for the
express purpose of using it, as it was used, against the Union and
in favor of the Confederacy.

PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FIRST MESSAGE.

The President's resentment towards those who had thus, as he thought,
broken faith with him is visible in his message. Referring to the
Virginia convention, he observed that, "the people had chosen a
large majority of professed Union men" as delegates. "After the
fall of Sumter, many members of that majority went over to the
original Disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance
withdrawing the