iscussion and calm appeals to
reason and to the justice of the people will not fail to redress the
wrong. But until the law shall be declared void by the courts or
repealed by Congress no individual or combination of individuals can be
justified in forcibly resisting its execution. It is impossible that any
government can continue to exist upon any other principles. It would
cease to be a government and be unworthy of the name if it had not the
power to enforce the execution of its own laws within its own sphere
of action.

It is true that cases may be imagined disclosing such a settled purpose
of usurpation and oppression on the part of the Government as would
justify an appeal to arms. These, however, are extreme cases, which we
have no reason to apprehend in a government where the power is in the
hands of a patriotic people. And no citizen who loves his country would
in any case whatever resort to forcible resistance unless he clearly saw
that the time had come when a freeman should prefer death to submission;
for if such a struggle is once begun, and the citizens of one section
of the country arrayed in arms against those of another in doubtful
conflict, let the battle result as it may, there will be an end of the
Union and with it an end to the hopes of freedom. The victory of the
injured would not secure to them the blessings of liberty; it would
avenge their wrongs, but they would themselves share in the common ruin.

But the Constitution can not be maintained nor the Union preserved,
in opposition to public feeling, by the mere exertion of the coercive
powers confided to the General Government. The foundations must be
laid in the affections of the people, in the security it gives to life,
liberty, character, and property in every quarter of the country, and in
the fraternal attachment which the citizens of the several States bear
to one another as members of one political family, mutually contributing
to promote the happiness of each other. Hence the citizens of every
State should studiously avoid everything calculated to wound the
sensibility or offend the just pride of the people of other States, and
they should frown upon any proceedings within their own borders likely
to disturb the tranquillity of their political brethren in other
portions of the Union. In a country so extensive as the United States,
and with pursuits so varied, the internal regulations of the several
States must frequently differ from one