First Inaugural Address
Fellow Citizens of the United States:
In compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I
appear before you to address you briefl y and to take in your pres-
ence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States
to be taken by the President before he enters on the execution of
this offi
ce.
I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those
matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety
or excitement.
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern
States that by the accession of a Republican
Administration their
property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered.
Th
ere has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension.
Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while
existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all
the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but
quote from one of those speeches when I declare that I have no
purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of
slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right
to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Th
ose who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge
that I had 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 to themselves and to me, the clear and
emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States,
and especially the right of each State to order and control its own
domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively,
is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and
endurance of our political fabric depend, and we denounce the
lawless invasion by armed force of the
soil of any State or Territory,
no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon
the public 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 wise endangered by the now incoming Administration.
I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the
Constitution
and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given
to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause—as
cheerfully to one section as to another.
Th
ere is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives
from service or labor. Th
e clause I now read is as plainly written in
the Constitution as any other 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 be discharged
from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or
labor may be due.
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those
who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves, and
the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress
swear their support to the whole Constitution—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 be delivered up”
their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the eff ort in
good temper, could they not with nearly
equal unanimity frame and
pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
Th
ere is some diff erence of opinion whether this clause should be
enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that diff erence
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 anyone in any case be content that his oath
106 abraham
lincoln
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 intro-
duced, 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 offi
cial oath today with no mental reservations and
with no purpose to construe the Constitution or laws by any hyper-
critical 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 offi
cial and private stations, to con-
form to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed than to
violate any of them trusting to fi nd impunity in having them held
to be unconstitutional.
Abraham Lincoln, 1860
first inaugural address
107