truly may it be said, "The gates of hell
cannot prevail against them." In all trying positions in which I shall be
placed--and, doubtless, I shall be placed in many such--my reliance will
be placed upon you and the people of the United States; and I wish you to
remember, now and forever, that it is your business, and not mine; that if
the union of these States and the liberties of this people shall be lost,
it is but little to any one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great
deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and
to their posterity in all coming time. It is your business to rise up and
preserve the Union and liberty for yourselves, and not for me.

I desire they should be constitutionally performed. I, as already
intimated, am but an accidental instrument, temporary, and to serve but
for a limited time; and I appeal to you again to constantly bear in mind
that with you, and not with politicians, not with Presidents, not with
office-seekers, but with you is the question, Shall the Union and shall
the liberties of this country be preserved to the latest generations?

ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF INDIANA, AT INDIANAPOLIS,

FEBRUARY 12, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE STATE OF INDIANA:--I am here to thank you much for
this magnificent welcome, and still more for the generous support given
by your State to that political cause which I think is the true and just
cause of the whole country and the whole world.

Solomon says there is "a time to keep silence," and when men wrangle by
the mouth with no certainty that they mean the same thing while using the
same word, it perhaps were as well if they would keep silence.

The words "coercion" and "invasion" are much used in these days, and often
with some temper and hot blood. Let us make sure, if we can, the meaning
of those who use them. Let us get the exact definitions of these words,
not from dictionaries, but from the men themselves, who certainly
deprecate the things they would represent by the use of the words.

What, then, is coercion? What is invasion? Would the marching of an army
into South Carolina, without the consent of her people, and with hostile
intent toward them, be invasion? I certainly think it would, and it would
be coercion also, if the South Carolinians were forced to submit. But if
the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts and other
property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, o