at the prospects of the war were, we need not say
absolutely hopeless,--because that is the unfounded hypothesis of those
whose wish is father to their thought,--but full of discouragement. Can
we make a safe and honorable peace as the quarrel now stands? As honor
comes before safety, let us look at that first. We have undertaken to
resent a supreme insult, and have had to bear new insults and
aggressions, even to the direct menace of our national capital. The
blood which our best and bravest have shed will never sink into the
ground until our wrongs are righted, or the power to right them is shown
to be insufficient. If we stop now, all the loss of life has been
butchery; if we carry out the intention with which we first resented the
outrage, the earth drinks up the blood of our martyrs, and the rose of
honor blooms forever where it was shed. To accept less than indemnity
for the past, so far as the wretched kingdom of the conspirators can
afford it, and security for the future, would discredit us in our own
eyes and in the eyes of those who hate and long to be able to despise us.
But to reward the insults and the robberies we have suffered, by the
surrender of our fortresses along the coast, in the national gulf, and on
the banks of the national river,--and this and much more would surely be
demanded of us,--would place the United Fraction of America on a level
with the Peruvian guano-islands, whose ignoble but coveted soil is open
to be plundered by all comers!

If we could make a peace without dishonor, could we make one that would
be safe and lasting? We could have an armistice, no doubt, long enough
for the flesh of our wounded men to heal and their broken bones to knit
together. But could we expect a solid, substantial, enduring peace, in
which the grass would have time to grow in the war-paths, and the bruised
arms to rust, as the old G. R. cannon rusted in our State arsenal,
sleeping with their tompions in their mouths, like so many sucking lambs?
It is not the question whether the same set of soldiers would be again
summoned to the field. Let us take it for granted that we have seen
enough of the miseries of warfare to last us for a while, and keep us
contented with militia musters and sham-fights. The question is whether
we could leave our children and our children's children with any secure
trust that they would not have to go through the very trials we are
enduring, probably on a more extended scal