"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
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. Though passion
may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic
chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave,
to every living heart and hearthstone 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."*

*Lincoln VI, 184; N. & H., III, 343. Seward advised the
omission of part of the original draft of the first of these
two paragraphs. After "defend it," Lincoln had written, "You
can forbear the assault upon it. I can not shrink from the
defense of it. With you and not with me is the solemn
question 'Shall it be peace or a sword?'" Having struck this
out, he accepted Seward's advice to add "some words of
affection--some of calm and cheerful confidence."

The original version of the concluding paragraph was prepared by Seward
and read as follows: "I close. We are not, we must not he aliens or
enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has
strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure,
they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from
so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the
hearts and all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again