John Sherman

Why, sir, we may do all we can to prevent it; we may throw ourselves into the breach; we may stand up and yield everything, or cringe down and yield everything; but I tell you that will not stop the surging waves.

There is no man, with a head to reason and a heart to feel, who does not shudder at the idea of civil war.

Let us not deceive ourselves with the idea that this government can be broken up on Mason and Dixon's line, or upon any other line, without involving us in all we dread.

For the moment, under the smart of imaginary wrongs, under the disappointment of political defeat, your people may be hurried into acts of madness; but when returning reason comes, woe be to them who have led them astray!

I ask if the same patriotism which brought your fathers and mine into common battlefields, amid all the storms of the Revolution, does not now rebel when you are forced into a civil war by the madness of a few men in the southern states?

Has the feeling of sectionalism become stronger than love of country?

I ask you, gentlemen from Virginia and the south, does not your blood boil with indignation when you read of the surrender of our forts and the dishonor of our flag?

You can arrest this movement, and you alone can do it.

We must not allow the government to crumble at our feet.

If your people will not aid the government in maintaining the public property in the seceding states, then we must do it in spite of you, or perish in the attempt.

My colleague may paint in beautiful language the blessings of peace; and cry 'peace! peace!' when there is no peace; but, Mr. chairman, you and I see already rising in the west, where military feeling is so rife, a spirit which will not…

If you do not, I see nothing but civil war before us.

Sirs, if you do calm this storm, peace will again smile upon our country.

If there is not, then, if we cannot agree, let us fight; but if we can agree, let us do it like men, and not be hurried off by wild and insane feelings of rage and disappointment, by the weakest state in this confederacy.

I appeal to the Representatives of the border states to arrest the progress of this storm for a little time, at least.

All history teaches us that whenever a free government is disrupted a military despotism of force is substituted for the will of the people; and we have no right to suppose that our country will be an exception to the general rule.

If this republic is dissolved, the man now lives who will be the Napoleon of some section thereof.

The condition of this country will be worse than that of Mexico, because we are a braver, a more powerful, people, who will fight each other with greater tenacity.

But, sir, freedom will die with the fall of this republic, and the survivors of the calamity will find springing into existence military despotisms north, south, east and west.

God forbid that the despots of the Old World should ever adorn their infernal logic by pointing to a disrupted Union here!

Are you ready to join excited men, who will not listen to reason; who even spurn your patriotism as timidity; who reject your counsels, and who would drag you as unwilling victims at the heel of their car of juggernaut, crushing under its…

Do you, gentlemen from Virginia, whose great statesman had so large a share in laying the foundations of our government, desire to see it thus dishonored?

Must it surrender its property, its flag, its nationality?

Must this government submit to insult and indignity?

The question is not, shall we coerce a state? but shall we not defend the property of the United States against all enemies, at home and abroad, here or wherever the flag of our country floats?