From this time forth, among the patriotic people of the loyal states, there was no thought or talk of compromise.

There is a fixed determination now to preserve the Union and enforce the laws at all hazards.

Civil war is actually upon us, and, strange to say, it brings a feeling of relief; the suspense is over.

Whatever you may think of the signs of the times, the government will rise from this strife greater, stronger, and more prosperous than ever.

The men who have confidence in it, and do their full duty by it, may reap whatever there is of honor and profit in public life, while those who look on merely as spectators in the storm will fail to discharge the highest duty of a citizen…

If the government is to be maintained, it must be by military power, and that immediately.

The administration intends to stand or fall by the Union, the entire Union, and the enforcement of the laws.

I look for preliminary defeats, for the rebels have arms, organization, unity; but this advantage will not last long.

The government will maintain itself or our northern people are the veriest poltroons that ever disgraced humanity.

The time will come in this country when professional knowledge will be appreciated, when men that can be trusted will be wanted, and I will bide my time.

Lincoln was elected President, there was no general feeling among the northern people that war would result from his election.

It was not believed, although it had been threatened, that the southern states would take up arms to resist the accession of a President not of their choice.

The love of Union and the orderly obedience to constituted authority had been so well established among our people that, while politicians might threaten, but few really believed that war, of which they knew nothing, was to come upon us.

I am bound to say that the members of the Democratic party in the loyal States, in the main, evinced the same patriotic determination to maintain the cause of the Union, as those of the Republican party.

Undoubtedly, the existence of negro slavery in the south was the governing excitement to war.

Besides the danger of escape, there was the growing hostility to slavery in a preponderance of the people of the United States, restrained only by its recognition by the constitution.

The slave owners believed that, by secession, they could establish a republic, founded on slavery, with an ample field in Mexico and Central America for conquest and expansion.

They had cultivated a bitter sectional enmity, amounting to contempt, for the people of the north, growing partly out of the subserviency of large portions of the north to the dictation of the south, but chiefly out of the wordy violence…

Once in the war, there was no way but to fight it out.

I have no sympathy with secession, but I can appreciate the action of those who were born and reared under the influence of such teachings.

Who of the north can say, that in like conditions, he would not have been a rebel?

I would stake the last life, the last dollar, the last man, upon the prosecution of the war.

Indeed, I cannot contemplate the condition of my country if it shall be dissevered and divided.

Do you not know that the normal condition of such a state of affairs would be eternal, everlasting war?

Two nations of the same blood, of the same lineage, of the same spirit, cannot occupy the same continent, much less standing side by side as rival nations, dividing rivers and mountains for their boundary.