John Vaughan leaned toward Betty and whispered half to himself:
"I wonder if those cheers were defiance after all?"
But the girl was too intent on the words of the speaker to answer. His next sentence brought a smile and a nod of approval from Senator Douglas.
"But beyond what may be necessary for those objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere——"
Again and again Douglas nodded his approval and spoke it in low tones:
"Good! Good! That means no coercion."
And then, followed in solemn tones, the fateful sentences:
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you unless you first assail it. You can have no conflict without yourselves being 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. You can forbear the assault upon it; I can not shrink from the defense of it——"
Again he paused, and the crowd hung spellbound as he began his closing paragraph in tender persuasive accents throbbing with emotion, his clear voice breaking for the first time:
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield 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."