It depresses the spirits, and humiliates the soul, that this war is now running into its fifth year, has cost thirty millions of dollars, has successively baffled and disgraced all our chief military generals,--Gaines, Scott, Jesup, and Macomb,--and that our last resources now are bloodhounds and no quarter.
Quincy expresses his dismay over the prolonged and costly nature of a war that has failed to achieve its objectives.
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The tongue of falsehood can never be silenced.
If its operation should turn out more advantageous to them, it will be more honorable for us; and I never can object to entering formally into an obligation to do that which, upon every virtuous principle, ought to be done without it.
The seeds of this complicated machine were all sown in the Declaration of Independence; and their fruits can never be eradicated but by the dissolution of the Union.
No man can be surprised that such a cause was swept away by a moral and political whirlwind; that it carried with it all the institutions of civil society, so that its march was a wild desolation.
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