xtreme of wickedness or folly,
can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject.
Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object
to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take
deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good
object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still
have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the
laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have
no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted
that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there
still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence,
patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet
forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best way
all our present difficulty.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the
momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can
have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the
most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend" it.

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of
affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this
broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as
surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

REFUSAL OF SEWARD RESIGNATION

TO WM. H. SEWARD.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 4, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your note of the 2d instant, asking to withdraw your
acceptance of my invitation to take charge of the State Department, was
duly received. It is the subject of the most painful solicitude with me,
and I feel constrained to beg that you will countermand the withdrawal.
The public interest, I think, demands that you should; and my personal
feelings are deeply enlisted in the same direction. Please consider and
answer by 9 A.M. to-morrow.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

REPLY TO THE PENNSYLVANIA DELEGATION,

WASHINGTON, MARCH 5, 1861

Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTL