about a return of the
serpent. Yes, sir; the wily serpent, the rattlesnake, has been
substituted as the emblem on the flag of one of the seceding States;
and that old flag, the Stars and the Stripes, under which our fathers
fought and bled and conquered, and achieved our rights and our
liberties, is pulled down and trailed in the dust, and the rattlesnake
substituted. Will the American people tolerate it? They will be
indulgent; time, I think, is wanted, but they will not submit to it.

A word more in conclusion. Give the Border States that security which
they desire, and the time will come when the other States will come
back; when they will be brought back--how? Not by the coercion of the
Border States, but by the coercion of the people; and those leaders
who have taken them out will fall beneath the indignation and the
accumulating force of that public opinion which will ultimately crush
them. The gentlemen who have taken those States out are not the men to
bring them back.

I have already suggested that the idea may have entered into some
minds, "if we cannot get to be President and Vice-President of the
whole United States, we may divide the Government, set up a new
establishment, have new offices, and monopolize them ourselves when we
take our States out." Here we see a President made, a Vice-President
made, cabinet officers appointed, and yet the great mass of the people
not consulted, nor their assent obtained in any manner whatever. The
people of the country ought to be aroused to this condition of
things; they ought to buckle on their armor; and, as Tennessee has
done (GOD bless her!), by the exercise of the elective franchise, by
going to the ballot-box under a new set of leaders, they will
repudiate and put down those men who have carried these States out and
usurped a Government over their heads. I trust in GOD that the old
flag of the Union will never be struck. I hope it may long wave, and
that we may long hear the national air sung:

"The star-spangled banner, long may it wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"

Long may we hear old Hail Columbia, that good old national air, played
on all our martial instruments! long may we hear, and never repudiate,
the old tune of Yankee Doodle! Long may wave that gallant old flag
which went through the Revolution, and which was borne by Tennessee
and Kentucky at the battle of New Orleans, upon that soil the right to
navigate the Mi