Excerpt from The Union: National and State Sovereignty Alike Essential to American Liberty, a Discourse Delivered in the Hall of the House Representatives at the Capitol, in Frankfort, Ky;, December 19, 1859
I come before you this evening the humble advocate of the American Constitution, and of American liberty and happiness inseparably bound up in that Constitution.
By the American Constitution I do not mean the Federal Government, but the complex system formed by that Government and the several State Governments in their due place and connection.
I come to attempt to show you why you should cherish this system as, next to Christianity, the most precious of the gifts of God to any people. I hope to prove to you that every man in this house, and every man in this country, should swear to preserve these institutions: and, as the temporal sanction of that oath, should pledge, as our fathers once did on an issue not more sacred, their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
As an intelligent people, placed in trust by Almighty God with the most glorious heritage ever bestowed upon men, it is our imperative duty to study well the principles of the government under which we live; and to look from time to time with earnest scrutiny at the working and progress and condition of those principles, and of the institutions founded upon them.
Society and government cannot work themselves in an invariable order, as the animal, vegetable, and inorganic systems of creation seem to do, by virtue of physiological and mechanical forces once for all applied.
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