children of the Country; they belong to the whole Country; they are
our sons; our kinsmen; and there are many of us who will give them all
up before we will abate one word of our just demand, or will retreat one
inch from the line which divides right from wrong.
"Sir, it is not a question of men or of money in that sense. All the
money, all the men, are, in our judgment, well bestowed in such a cause.
When we give them, we know their value. Knowing their value well, we
give them with the more pride and the, more joy. Sir, how can we
retreat? Sir, how can we make Peace? Who shall treat? What
Commissioners? Who would go? Upon what terms? Where is to be your
boundary line? Where the end of the principles we shall have to give
up? What will become of Constitutional Government? What will become of
public Liberty? What of past glories? What of future hopes?
"Shall we sink into the insignificance of the grave--a degraded,
defeated, emasculated People, frightened by the results of one battle,
and scared at the visions raised by the imagination of the Senator from
Kentucky on this floor? No, Sir! a thousand times, no, Sir! We will
rally--if, indeed, our words be necessary--we will rally the People, the
Loyal People, of the whole Country. They will pour forth their
treasure, their money, their men, without stint, without measure. The
most peaceable man in this body may stamp his foot upon this Senate
Chamber floor, as of old a warrior and a Senator did, and from that
single tramp there will spring forth armed Legions.
"Shall one battle determine the fate of empire, or a dozen?--the loss of
one thousand men, or twenty thousand? or one hundred million or five
hundred million dollars? In a year's Peace--in ten years, at most, of
peaceful progress--we can restore them all. There will be some graves
reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There will be
some privation; there will be some loss of luxury; there will be
somewhat more need for labor to procure the necessaries of life. When
that is said, all is said. If we have the Country, the whole Country,
the Union, the Constitution, Free Government--with these there will
return all the blessings of well-ordered civilization; the path of the
Country will be a career of greatness and of glory such as, in the olden
time, our Fathers saw in the dim visions of years yet to come, and such
as would have been ours now, to-day, if it had not been for t
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