Oregon has
answered my argument. He asks, what must we do? As we progress southward
and invade the country, must we not, said he, carry with us all the laws
of war? I would not progress southward and invade the country.

The President of the United States, as I again repeat, in my judgment
only has the power to call out the military to assist the civil
authority in executing the laws; and when the question assumes the
magnitude and takes the form of a great political severance, and nearly
half the members of the Confederacy withdraw themselves from it, what
then? I have never held that one State or a number of States have a
right without cause to break the compact of the Constitution. But what I
mean to say is that you cannot then undertake to make war in the name of
the Constitution. In my opinion they are out. You may conquer them; but
do not attempt to do it under what I consider false political pretenses.
However, sir, I will not enlarge upon that. I have developed these ideas
again and again, and I do not care to re-argue them. Hence the Senator
and I start from entirely different stand-points, and his pretended
replies are no replies at all.

The Senator asks me, "What would you have us do?" I have already
intimated what I would have us do. I would have us stop the war. We
can do it. I have tried to show that there is none of that inexorable
necessity to continue this war which the Senator seems to suppose. I do
not hold that constitutional liberty on this continent is bound up in
this fratricidal, devastating, horrible contest. Upon the contrary, I
fear it will find its grave in it. The Senator is mistaken in supposing
that we can reunite these States by war. He is mistaken in supposing
that eighteen or twenty million upon the one side can subjugate ten or
twelve million upon the other; or, if they do subjugate them, that you
can restore constitutional government as our fathers made it. You will
have to govern them as Territories, as suggested by the Senator, if
ever they are reduced to the dominion of the United States, or, as the
Senator from Vermont called them, "those rebellious provinces of this
Union," in his speech to-day. Sir, I would prefer to see these States
all reunited upon true constitutional principles to any other object
that could be offered me in life; and to restore, upon the principles
of of our fathers, the Union of these States, to me the sacrifice of one
unimportant life would be nothing;