ssee, where a strong Union sentiment prevailed, hesitated and
delayed, but the young and active spirits were with the south, and
these carried the states named into the general conflict. Once in
the war, there was no way but to fight it out. I have no sympathy
with secession, but I can appreciate the action of those who were
born and reared under the influence of such teachings. Who of the
north can say, that in like conditions, he would not have been a
rebel?

Looking back from my standpoint now, when all the states are re-
united in a stronger Union, when Union and Confederate soldiers
are acting together in both Houses of Congress in legislating for
the common good, when, since 1861, our country has more than doubled
its population and quadrupled its resources, when its institutions
have been harmonized by the abolition of slavery, when the seceding
states are entering into a friendly and hopeful rivalry, in the
development of their great resources, when they have doubled or
trebled their production of cotton, when they are producing the
greater part of their food, when they are developing their manufactures
of iron and steel, and introducing the spindle and loom into the
cities and villages, it seems to me that men of the south surely
will appreciate, if they do not approve, what I said in the Senate
early in the war:

"I would stake the last life, the last dollar, the last man, upon
the prosecution of the war. Indeed, I cannot contemplate the
condition of my country if it shall be dissevered and divided.
Take the loyal states as they now stand and look at the map of the
United States, and regard two hostile confederacies stretching
along for thousands of miles across the continent. Do you not know
that the normal condition of such a state of affairs would be
eternal, everlasting war? Two nations of the same blood, of the
same lineage, of the same spirit, cannot occupy the same continent,
much less standing side by side as rival nations, dividing rivers
and mountains for their boundary. No, Mr. president, rather than
allow this war to terminate except upon the restoration of the
Union intact in all its breadth and length, I would sacrifice the
last man and see the country itself submerged.

"Rather than yield to traitors or the intervention of foreign
powers, rather than bequeath to the next generation a broken Union,
and an interminable civil war, I would light the torch of fanaticism
and destroy all th