the struggle
... I ask every citizen in the great basin between the Rocky Mountains
and the Alleghanies ... to tell me whether he is ever willing to
sanction a line of policy that may isolate us from the markets of the
world, and make us dependent provinces upon the powers that thus
choose to isolate us?... Hence, if a war does come, it is a war of
self-defense on our part. It is a war in defense of the Government
which we have inherited as a priceless legacy from our patriotic
fathers, in defense of those great rights of freedom of trade,
commerce, transit and intercourse from the center to the circumference
of our great continent."[996]

The voice of the strong man, so little given to weak sentiment, broke,
as he said, "I have struggled almost against hope to avert the
calamities of war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our
brethren in the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to
point out how it may be. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us
the issues of this great struggle. Bloody--calamitous--I fear it will
be. May we so conduct it, if a collision must come, that we will stand
justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts, and who will
justify our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the
spirit of vengeance, much less to the desire for conquest or ambition.
I see no path of ambition open in a bloody struggle for triumphs over
my countrymen. There is no path of ambition open for me in a divided
country.... My friends, I can say no more. To discuss these topics is
the most painful duty of my life. It is with a sad heart--with a grief
I have never before experienced--that I have to contemplate this
fearful struggle; but I believe in my conscience that it is a duty we
owe to ourselves and to our children, and to our God, to protect this
Government and that flag from every assailant, be he who he may."

Thereafter treason had no abiding place within the limits of the State
of Illinois. And no one, it may be safely affirmed, could have so
steeled the hearts of men in Southern Illinois for the death grapple.
In a manly passage in his speech, Douglas said, "I believe I may with
confidence appeal to the people of every section of the country to
bear witness that I have been as thoroughly national as any man that
has lived in my day. And I believe if I should make an appeal to the
people of Illinois, or of the Northern States, to their impartial
verdict; they would say