“There is no desire on our part for so unnatural a war. To avert it we shall be willing to yield anything but honor. Our hands are sufficiently full. To have a British fleet thundering at our sea-doors, while the volcano was yet pouring lava through our Southern States, would be a little more business on hand than could be attended to with that thoroughness which our people desire in all warlike enterprises. “Yet should England force us into war, terrible and atrocious as that would be, America is determined to put her in the wrong before the world. If we have transgressed any law of nations; if we have, indeed, violated any right of England; if we have, to the width of a hair, passed beyond the line of our own proper duty and right, we shall, upon suitable showing, need no menace to make ample reparation. We shall do it for the satisfaction of our own sense of justice. But if we are right, if we have done right, all the threatenings in the world will not move this people from their steadfastness.... “Our wish is to unite with England in a race of civilization. But if she _will_ fight, we _must_.” Some idea of the variety and character of the work he did at this time may be gained by a look at his editorials found in the _Independent_ of January 16, 1862, the third week of his administration as editor. The first is “Our Help from Above,” in which he directs all burdened hearts to the great sources and divine methods of consolation. “The nearer our thoughts come to the infinite and the divine the more power have we over our troubles. The act of consolation is, to a great degree, the act of inspiration.” The raising, equipping, and feeding such vast armies as, it was now seen, would be required for the prosecution of the war, awakened in the minds of thoughtful men a question scarcely second in importance to any. By what plan or on what system shall the money required for these large and expensive enterprises be secured? His second editorial upon this page takes up this matter under the head of “A Word from the People to Congress,” in which he urges the fearless imposition of taxes sufficient to carry on the war, and justifies such a course upon the simple basis of honesty. The article opens with this sentence, “Taxation and national honesty are now synonymous,” and closes with this, “Every honest man in America ought to send to Washington one message in two words, _Fight_, _Tax_.”