an audience of
Republicans for refusing such a contract.

Now, what can we of the North, we Republicans, do? By a settlement
here we can retain the Border States, and, in my opinion, that is
equivalent to saving the Union. Retain the Border States and the
seceding States must come back. If the Border States go, I believe war
is inevitable. How can two sections exist with only an imaginary line
between them. I do not believe the South will ever consent to give up
the Capital, claimed to be within her borders, and the North could
never surrender it. Sir, I shrink from the prospect of civil war. The
picture of civil war has often been painted, and by abler hands than
mine. Its calamities and miseries, the sufferings that attend it,
strike a chill of horror to the soul. But such a picture as a civil
war in this country would be, has never been drawn. History would be
searched in vain for its parallel. A civil war between the members of
a family, between brother and brother, father and son, who have all
enjoyed the same blessings which their fathers made early and bloody
sacrifices to secure! Shall it be said that such a people, for such a
cause, risked their interests, their country, their all, and rushed
blindly into the calamities of a civil war? He has read history to
little account who has not learned that such a warfare is, in its
nature, not only cruel, but protracted. It is like letting loose the
hurricane. Passion and poverty, carnage and crime, desolation and
death, become the condition of a hitherto happy people. For thirty
years Germany was ravaged, and millions slain by a contest occasioned
by a difference in religious opinions. For more than thirty years the
war of the Roses devastated England. The French Revolution, including
the "Reign of Terror"--originating in a question of taxation and
terminating with the supremacy of Napoleon--lasted nearly ten years.
For a like decade civil war raged between England and Scotland,
originating in a question of authority between the King and Commons,
and ending in Cromwell's protectorate. Why, I ask, if we admit this
fiendish visitant to our borders, should we anticipate that our fate
would be more favorable? No! war is to be averted, and a nation still
covered with glory is to be preserved by holding the Border States in
the Union.

If I am asked what I would do; I answer, Compromise--compromise! Two
gentlemen cannot live in a parlor together a single day without
reci