ith
blood-vessels or change a temporary cartilage into bone.

Suppose, however, that 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