Whitelaw Reid: “What would more thoroughly insure its speedily flying to pieces than the lack of every one of these requisites?”

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

We are all washed under, and the most of us only live peaceable lives by the sufferance of our Rebel neighbors.

Something, however, must be done to disperse this unwholesome gathering at Newbern, or the tumor, thus neglected, may do serious injury.

That would be “jumping from the frying-pan into the fire,” indeed.