Governor Oliver P. Morton's Speech Welcoming Abraham Lincoln to Indianapolis, Indiana, February 11, 1861

Sir, on behalf of the people of Indiana, I bid you welcome.  They avail themselves of this occasion to offer their tribute of high respect to your character as a man and as a statesman, and in your person to honor the high office to which you have been elected.  In every free government there will be differences of opinion, and those differences result in the formation of parties; but when the voice of the people has been expressed through the forms of the Constitution, all parties yield to it obedience.  Submission to the popular will is the essential principle of Republican government, and so vital is this principle that it admits of but one exception, which is revolution.  To weaken it, is anarchy; to destroy it, is despotism.  It recognizes no appeal beyond the ballot box, and while it is preserved, liberty may be wounded but never slain.  To this principle the people of Indiana – men of all parties – are bound, and they here welcome you as the Chief Magistrate elect of the people.  When our fathers framed the Constitution, they declared it was to form a more perfect union, establish justice and to preserve the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity; and for this consideration we proclaim the determination of our people to maintain that Constitution inviolate as it came from their hands.  This Union has been the idol of our hopes, the parent of our prosperity, our title to the respect and consideration of the world.  May it be preserved, it is the prayer of every patriotic heart in Indiana, and that it shall be, is their determination.

You are about to enter upon your official duties under circumstances at once novel and full of difficulty, and it will be the duty of all good citizens without distinction of party, to yield a cordial and earnest support to every measure of your administration calculated to maintain the Union, promote the national prosperity, and restore peace to our distracted and unhappy country.  Our Government, which but yesterday was the theme of every eulogy, and stood the Admiration of the world is today threatening to crumble into ruins, and it remains to be seen whether it possesses living principles, or whether in the fullness of time the hour of its dissolution is at hand.  But we are full of confidence that the end is not yet, that the precious rich inheritance whom our fathers will not elude our grasp or be wrested from us without a struggle; that we are but passing through one of those civil commotions that make the history of very nation, and that we shall emerge from the present gloom into the bright sunlight of peace and fraternity, and march forward with accelerated speed in the paths of prosperity and power.

SOURCE: “Gov. Morton’s Speech,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Tuesday February 12, 1861, p. 1