Whitelaw Reid: “Brushing aside, then, these bugbears, gentlemen, what are the obvious duties of the hour?”

It seems to me, then, idle to thresh over old straw when the grain is not only winnowed, but gone to the mill.

Fully believing the debts of their Rebel Government legal and just, they were prepared to repudiate them at a hint from Washington.

Give them order and justice, and trust to these to win them in other regards to our ways.

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