uaranty that he will not attempt any
violation of a clear constitutional right.

After all, he is no more than the chief executive officer of the
Government. His province is not to make but to execute the laws.
And it is a remarkable fact in our history that, notwithstanding
the repeated efforts of the antislavery party, no single act has ever
passed Congress, unless we may possibly except the Missouri compromise,
impairing in the slightest degree the rights of the South to their
property in slaves; and it may also be observed, judging from present
indications, that no probability exists of the passage of such an act by
a majority of both Houses, either in the present or the next Congress.
Surely under these circumstances we ought to be restrained from present
action by the precept of Him who spake as man never spoke, that
"sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," The day of evil may never
come unless we shall rashly bring it upon ourselves.

It is alleged as one cause for immediate secession that the Southern
States are denied equal rights with the other States in the common
Territories. But by what authority are these denied? Not by Congress,
which has never passed, and I believe never will pass, any act to
exclude slavery from these Territories; and certainly not by the Supreme
Court, which has solemnly decided that slaves are property, and, like
all other property, their owners have a right to take them into the
common Territories and hold them there under the protection of the
Constitution.

So far then, as Congress is concerned, the objection is not to anything
they have already done, but to what they may do hereafter. It will
surely be admitted that this apprehension of future danger is no good
reason for an immediate dissolution of the Union. It is true that the
Territorial legislature of Kansas, on the 23d February, 1860, passed in
great haste an act over the veto of the governor declaring that slavery
"is and shall be forever prohibited in this Territory." Such an act,
however, plainly violating the rights of property secured by the
Constitution, will surely be declared void by the judiciary whenever
it shall be presented in a legal form.

Only three days after my inauguration the Supreme Court of the United
States solemnly adjudged that this power did not exist in a Territorial
legislature. Yet such has been the factious temper of the times that the
correctness of this decision has been extensively i