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. Can a contract be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? That in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual is confirmed by the history of the Union itself. No State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision has ever been denied. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guarantees and provisions in the Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning them. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must cease. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them. Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Unanimity is impossible. One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. Physically speaking we cannot separate. Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always. This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inherit it. The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people. Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people. This people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.