necessity even, for other controversies and wars, as long as the line of division remains.
“Nor can we doubt, that when, by division, you abandon the Union, acknowledge the Constitution to be a failure, the contest would be carried on regardless of State sovereignty, and finally end in the subjugation of all to one idea and one system in government. Whatever may stand or fall, whatever may survive or perish, the region between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, between the great lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, is destined to be and to continue under one form of government.”
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“If your victories are not followed by a revolution in public opinion, if your authority is not re-established in the seceded States by the assent thereto of a majority of the people, if they still regard themselves as aliens, and beyond your legitimate jurisdiction, then, inasmuch as the enjoyment of the right of the nation to exist is the supreme necessity of all, as the safety of the capital is essential to the enjoyment of that right, as the presence of slavery in Maryland and Virginia is inconsistent with the safety of the capital, no alternative remains but to provide for the extinction of slavery in those States at such times and upon such conditions, always including compensation to the masters who are not under the ban of the law of treason, as may be compatible with the welfare of the States themselves and the preservation of the Union.”
I advanced a step further in December, as will be seen from
the extracts from my speech on Emancipation:
“I say, then, it is a necessity that this war be closed
speedily. By blockade it cannot be; by battle it may be;
but we risk the result upon the uncertainty whether the great
