Source: Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Honolulu: Thursday, June 27, 1861.
There was a large meeting held in Buffalo which was addressed by ex-President Fillmore, who after thanking his fellow citizens for placing him in the chair said:
This is no time for any man to shrink from the responsibility that events have cast upon him. We have reached a crisis and no man has a right to stand neutral. Civil war has been inaugurated and we must meet it. The Government calls for aid and we must give it. Our institutions are in danger and we must defend them. It is no time no to enquire by whose fault or folly this state of things has been produced. Let every man therefore stand to his post, and like the Roman soldiers at the gate of Pompeii, let posterity when the storm is over, find our skeleton and armor on the spot where where duty required us to stand. My love of country embraces the whole Union. I know no North or South. I think our Southern brethren have made a great mistake in arraying themselves against the government, for fear it will be improperly administered. If they commence an aggressive warfare we have no alternative but to rally around the constitutional authorities and defend the government. No language can express my admiration of the whole souled patriotism displayed by the Union men of the border States. They stand like a rock in the midst of the ocean, against which the surges of secession will beat in vain.
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