ded, until you have rescued the Government and the country from
their assailants. When this paramount duty shall have been performed,
it will be proper for each of us to resume our respective political
positions according to our convictions of public duty. Give me a
country first, that my children may live in peace; then we will
have a theatre for our party organizations to operate upon.

"Are we to be called upon to fold our arms, allow the national
capital to be seized by a military force under a foreign revolutionary
flag; to see the archives of the Government in the hands of a people
who affect to despise the flag and Government of the United States?
I am not willing to be expelled by military force, nor to fly from
the Federal capitol. It has been my daily avocation six months in
the year, for eighteen years, to walk into that marble building,
and from its portico to survey a prosperous, happy, and united
country on both sides of the Potomac. I believe I may with confidence
appeal to the people of every section of the country to bear
testimony that I have been as thoroughly national in my political
opinions and actions as any man that has lived in my day. And I
believe if I should make an appeal to the people of the State of
Illinois, or of the Northern States, for their impartial verdict,
they would say that whatever errors I have committed have been in
leaning too far to the Southern section of the Union against my
own. I think I can appeal to friend and foe--I use the term in a
political sense, and I trust I use the word _foe_ in a past sense
--I can appeal to them with confidence, that I have never pandered
to the prejudice or passion of my section against the minority
section of this Union; and I will say to you now, with all frankness
and in all sincerity, that I will never sanction nor acquiesce in
any warfare whatever upon the constitutional rights or domestic
institutions of the people of the Southern States. On the contrary,
if there was an attempt to invade these rights--to stir up servile
insurrection among their people--I would rush to their rescue, and
interpose with whatever of strength I might possess to defend them
from such a calamity. While I will never invade them--while I will
never fail to defend and protect their rights to the full extent
that a fair and liberal construction of the Constitution can give
them--they must distinctly understand that I will never acquiesce
in their invasi