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President Lincoln was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1861. With an
unanswerable argument against disunion, and an earnest appeal to reason
and lawful remedy, he closed his inaugural address with the following
impressive declaration of peace and good-will:--
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 can 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 bond
of affection.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and
patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone 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.
On the 15th of March President Lincoln, having been advised by General
Scott that it was now "practically impossible to relieve or reinforce
Sumter," propounded the following question to his cabinet: "Assuming it
to be possible to provision Sumter, is it wise, under all the
circumstances of the case, to attempt to do so?" Five of the seven
members of the cabinet argued _against_ the policy of relief.
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