There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority; but surely that difference is not a very material one.  If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done.  And should any one in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not, in any case, surrendered as a slave?  And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States”?

I take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations, and with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hypercritical rules.  And, while I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Congress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will be much safer for all, both in official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional.

It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a President under our national Constitution.  During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have, in succession, administered the executive branch of the Government.  They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success.  Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty.  A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.  Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.  It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.  Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever—­it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it as a contract be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?  One party to a contract may violate it—­break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?