he Speeds, the Goodloes, Cassius M. Clay, and their followers, had
brought forth fruit for the Union. The patriotic men in the Legislature
had done their work well. The men in the camps on the north side of the
Ohio river moved over into Kentucky, and the invasion of Confederates
which was to sweep Kentucky into secession was at an end. Kentucky was
saved to the Union by the wise counsel and pacific policy of Abraham
Lincoln."

A special session of Congress convened on the 4th of July, in obedience
to the summons of the President in his proclamation of April 15. The
following day the message of the Executive rehearsed to the joint Houses
the circumstances which had rendered their assembling necessary. It
portrayed in clear and succinct words the situation of affairs, the
aggressive acts of the States aiming to disrupt the Federal Union, and
the measures adopted by the administration to frustrate their attempts.
The assailants of the Government, said the President, "have forced upon
the country the distinct issue, 'immediate dissolution or blood.' And
this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It
presents to the whole family of man the question whether a
constitutional Republic or Democracy--a Government of the people by the
same people--can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against
its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented
individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to
organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this
case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense,
break up their 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 message requested of Congress
"the legal means for making this contest a short and decisive one; that
you place at the control of the Government, for the work, at least four
hundred thousand men and $400,000,000. That number of men is about
one-tenth of those of proper ages within the regions where, apparently,
all are willing to engage; and the sum is less than a twenty-third part
of the money value owned by the men who seem ready to devote the whole.
A debt of $600,000,000 now is a less sum per head than was the debt of
our Revolu