Fellow citizens of the United States: in compliance with a custom as old as thegovernment itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take, inyour presence, the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, tobe taken by the President “before he enters on the execution of his office.”
I do not consider it necessary, at present, for me to discuss those matters ofadministration about which there is no special anxiety, or excitement.
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by theaccession of a Republican administration their property and their peace andpersonal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonablecause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contraryhas all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found innearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quotefrom one of those speeches when I declare that “I have no purpose, directly orindirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where itexists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination todo so.” Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that Ihad made this and many similar declarations, and had never recanted them. And,more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law tothemselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
“Resolved: that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, andespecially the right of each State to order and control its own domesticinstitutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to thatbalance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabricdepend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of anyState or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest ofcrimes.”
I now reiterate these sentiments; and, in doing so, I only press upon thepublic attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible,that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wiseendangered by the now incoming administration. I add, too, that all theprotection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can begiven, will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, forwhatever cause—as cheerfully to one section as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service orlabor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as anyother of its provisions:
“No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof,escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein bedischarged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim ofthe party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made itfor the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of thelawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the wholeConstitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition,then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause “shall bedelivered up”, their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort ingood temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law bymeans of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced bynational or by State authority; but surely that difference is not a verymaterial one. If the slave is t