It is an issue which can only be tried by war and decided by victory.

If we yield, we are beaten; if the Southern people fail him, he is beaten.

What is true, however, of him who heads the insurgent cause is not necessarily true of those who follow.

Although he can not reaccept the Union, they can.

Some of them, we know, already desire peace and reunion.

They can at any moment have peace simply by laying down their arms and submitting to the national authority under the Constitution.

Maryland is secure to liberty and union for all the future.

It is easy to see that under the sharp discipline of civil war the nation is beginning a new life.

And then the latter will cost no blood, no precious life.

Because of these diversities we waste much strength in struggles among ourselves.

Among the friends of the Union there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race amongst us.

I know of none which promises so certain results and is at the same time so unobjectionable as the organization of banking associations, under a general act of Congress, well guarded in its provisions.

Fluctuations in the value of currency are always injurious, and to reduce these fluctuations to the lowest possible point will always be a leading purpose in wise legislation.

In stating a single condition of peace I mean simply to say that the war will cease on the part of the Government whenever it shall have ceased on the part of those who began it.

In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the national authority on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Government, I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery.

But the time may come, probably will come, when public duty shall demand that it be closed and that in lieu more rigorous measures than heretofore shall be adopted.

In the midst of unprecedented political troubles we have cause of great gratitude to God for unusual good health and most abundant harvests.

One of the unavoidable consequences of the present insurrection is the entire suppression in many places of all the ordinary means of administering civil justice by the officers and in the forms of existing law.

Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

A disloyal portion of the American people have during the whole year been engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union.

The disloyal citizens of the United States who have offered the ruin of our country in return for the aid and comfort which they have invoked abroad have received less patronage and encouragement than they probably expected.

If we could dare to believe that foreign nations are actuated by no higher principle than this, I am quite sure a sound argument could be made to show them that they can reach their aim more readily and easily by aiding to crush this…

Those nations, however, not improbably saw from the first that it was the Union which made as well our foreign as our domestic commerce.

It is not my purpose to review our discussions with foreign states, because, whatever might be their wishes or dispositions, the integrity of our country and the stability of our Government mainly depend not upon them, but on the loyalty…

Since, however, it is apparent that here, as in every other state, foreign dangers necessarily attend domestic difficulties, I recommend that adequate and ample measures be adopted for maintaining the public defenses on every side.