“For the sake of these great principles I would give my life as quick as I would pour out a glass of water; or I will do what is harder than that—I will keep it and use it for forty years, if God spares it, increasing its toil every year. I will make any sacrifice or perform any labor for the sake of a moral principle. But when I look at the South, other feelings besides those of vengeance are excited in me. Every one of those traitors is as wicked as you think, and more. The Floyds, the Davises, the Toombses, the Rhetts, and all such as they, are more wicked than we know; and yet the Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour held up for every such one. They are all immortal, they are all, like myself, pilgrims toward the bourne of the eternal. And when I think how many ignorant creatures are led by those base men to do wicked things, half of the wickedness of which they do not know, I feel compassion for them and am sorry for them. If they array themselves against justice it is necessary that they should be overborne; but not one blow more than is necessary for the defence of the principle assailed should be struck. We are not authorized to inflict vengeance. ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.’ About the use of every single sword and spear and ball needful to assert a divine principle there should be no squeamishness. I am for war just so far as it is necessary to vindicate a great moral truth. But one particle of violence beyond that is a flagrant treason against the law of love. And I can say to-night that I would go to war with every State in the Southern Confederacy, if called of God to join the army, and would hold them to the conflict till the cause of right was vindicated; and that I could, at the same time, pray for those misguided men as easily as to-night I can pray for my own babes. I am as sorry for them as for any set of men in the world. I do not think I utter a prayer on any morning that I do not pray for them, and that God does not see my feeling of tenderness and sorrow toward them. And that is not all. I regard them as citizens yet. I love this whole country. I love its past and its prospective history. God do so to me, and more also, if I ever cease to feel for them all, misguided though they be, as anxiously as for my own kin and brethren. We cannot afford to be very critical with wickedness.