De Alexander

With measured rhetoric he traced the usurpations of the President and the acknowledged policy that was in future to guide the Administration.

He thought he was a great political leader, and he might have been if he had ever been sure of himself; but he was one of the poorest judges of men, and in that way was often deceived, often misled, and often led to change his opinions....

Upon the result of measures adopted to finish the war during the present spring and summer will depend the wish of the people to continue their present leaders, or to exchange them for others.

The logic of events requires you to be your own successor.

The Vice-President says, 'There are men in your midst who want the Union as it was and the Constitution as it is,' and he adds, sneeringly, 'They can't have it.' We will tell him there are many such men, and we say to him we will have it.

Can we get a united North upon a theory that the Constitution can be set aside at the will of one man, because, forsooth, he judges it to be a military necessity?

Does not every man know that we must have a united North to triumph?

At this very moment, when the fate of the nation and of individuals trembles in the balance, these madmen ask us to plunge into a bottomless pit of controversy upon indefinite purposes.

He denounced the Radicals as craven Americans, devoid of patriotic feeling, who were trying to make the humiliation and degradation of their country a stepping-stone to continued power.

When it comes, it will prove that no appeal lies from the ballot to the bullet, and that those who take it are sure to lose their case and pay the costs.

But why should negroes do anything for us, if we will do nothing for them? and if they, on the promise of freedom, stake their lives to save the Union, shall the promise not be kept?

Do you not think, in the struggle for the Union, that the withdrawal of negro help from the enemy weakens his resistance to you?

Whenever you are urged, after resistance to the Union is conquered, to continue to fight, it will be time enough to refuse.

Some of the commanders who have won our most important victories believe the emancipation policy the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebels, and that in one instance, at least, victory came with the aid of black soldiers.

And is it not needed when its taking helps us and hurts our enemy?

If slaves are property, is there any question that by the law of war such property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed?

To be effective a compromise must come from those in control of the rebel army, or from the people after our army has suppressed that army.

Any offer of terms made by men within that range, in opposition to that army, is simply nothing for the present, because such men have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise if one were made with them.

There are but three ways, he said, to stop the war; first, by suppressing rebellion, which he was trying to do; second, by giving up the Union, which he was trying to prevent; and third, by some imaginable compromise, which was impossible…

With direct and forceful language Lincoln took the people into his confidence.

In conventions few men were heard with keener interest, and every Republican recognised the fact that a new force had come into the councils of the party.

From the first he exhibited a marked capacity for public life.

To this charm of manner were added a singularly attractive presence, a pleasing voice, and the oratorical gifts that won him recognition even before he left Yale College.

Neither threats nor ingenious devices disturbed him, but with a fidelity as remarkable as it was rare he pushed aside the emissaries of extravagance and corruption as readily as a plow turns under the sod.

Of all the distinguished men who had filled that office none exhibited a more inflexible firmness than Robinson in holding the public purse strings.