"I would stake the last life, the last dollar, the last man, upon the prosecution of the war. Indeed, I cannot contemplate the condition of my country if it shall be dissevered and divided. Take the loyal states as they now stand and look at the map of the United States, and regard two hostile confederacies stretching along for thousands of miles across the continent. Do you not know that the normal condition of such a state of affairs would be eternal, everlasting war? Two nations of the same blood, of the same lineage, of the same spirit, cannot occupy the same continent, much less standing side by side as rival nations, dividing rivers and mountains for their boundary. No, Mr. president, rather than allow this war to terminate except upon the restoration of the Union intact in all its breadth and length, I would sacrifice the last man and see the country itself submerged.
"Rather than yield to traitors or the intervention of foreign powers, rather than bequeath to the next generation a broken Union, and an interminable civil war, I would light the torch of fanaticism and destroy all that the labor of two generations has accumulated. Better a desert and universal poverty than disunion; better the war of the French Revolution than an oligarchy founded upon the labor of slaves. But, sir, there is no need of this. The resources, wealth, and labor of twenty millions of freemen are amply sufficient to meet not only the physical, but financial, difficulties of the war. Thank God! the test to which all nations in the course of their history are subjected, is applied to us when we have a insignificant national debt; when our resources were never more manifest; when the loyal states are so throughly united; when our people are filled with a generous enthusiasm that will make the loss of life and burden of taxation easy to bear. If we conquer a peace by preserving the Union, the constitution, our nationality, all our ample territories, the rebound of prosperity in this country will enable a single generation easily to pay the national debt, even if the war is protracted until desolation is written upon every rebel hearthstone."
This, I believe, expressed the spirit and determination of the loyal states of the north, at the beginning of the war. With opinions so widely divergent in the two sections, and with a fixed purpose of each to stand by them, there was no way that poor frail human nature could devise to decide the controversy except to fight.