>In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine

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>In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you; you can have you no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 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.

What did he mean by this?