the work a sincere heart.  Whether I will bring a head equal to that heart will be for future times to determine.  It were useless for me to speak of details of plans now; I shall speak officially next Monday week, if ever.  If I should not speak then, it were useless for me to do so now.  If I do speak then, it is useless for me to do so now.  When I do speak, I shall take such ground as I deem best calculated to restore peace, harmony, and prosperity to the country, and tend to the perpetuity of the nation and the liberty of these States and these people.  Your worthy mayor has expressed the wish, in which I join with him, that it were convenient for me to remain in your city long enough to consult your merchants and manufacturers; or, as it were, to listen to those breathings rising within the consecrated walls wherein the Constitution of the United States and, I will add, the Declaration of Independence, were originally framed and adopted.  I assure you and your mayor that I had hoped on this occasion, and upon all occasions during my life, that I shall do nothing inconsistent with the teachings of these holy and most sacred walls.  I have never asked anything that does not breathe from those walls.  All my political warfare has been in favor of the teachings that come forth from these sacred walls.  May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if ever I prove false to those teachings.  Fellow-citizens, I have addressed you longer than I expected to do, and now allow me to bid you goodnight.

ADDRESS IN THE HALL OF INDEPENDENCE, PHILADELPHIA,

FEBRUARY 22, 1861

Mr. Cuyler:—­I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here, in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live.  You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of restoring peace to the present distracted condition of the country.  I can say in return, sir, that all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated and were given to the world from this hall.  I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.  I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence.  I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that independence.  I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept the confederacy so long together.  It was not the mere matter of separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world