林肯总统在1861年的第一次就职演说--英文版                                                                                                                               
    there 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. those 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.                                                               
    unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath? there is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by state authority, but surely that difference 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 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 introduced, 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 immunitie
s of citizens in the several states? i take the official oath to-day with no mental reservations and with no purpose to construe the constitution or laws by any hypercritical 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 official and private stations, to conform to and abide by all those acts which stand unrepealed than to violate any of them trusting to find impunity in having them held to be unconstitutional. it is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a president under our national constitution. during that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession                                                               
    administered the executive branch of the government. they have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success.                                                               
    yet, with all this scope of precedent, i now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. a disruption of the federal union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably                                                               
    attempted. i hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the constitution the union of these states is perpetual. perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. 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, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. again: if the united states be not a government proper, but an association of states in the nature of contract merely, can it, as acontract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? one party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak--but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the union itself. the union is much older than the constitution.                                                               
就职演说
    it was formed, in fact, by the articles of association in 1774. it was matured and continued by the declaration of independence in 1776. it was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen states expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by
the articles of confederation in 1778. and finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the constitution was to form a more perfect union. but if destruction of the union by one or by a part only of the states be lawfully possible, the union is less perfect than before the constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. it follows from these views that no state upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the union; that resolves and ordinances to that