“These are well-established principles of war, and the people of the South having appealed to war, are barred from appealing to our Constitution, which they have practically and publicly defied. They have appealed to war, and must abide its rules and laws. The United States, as a belligerent party claiming right in the soil as the ultimate sovereign, have a right to change the population, and it may be and is both politic and just we should do so in certain districts. When the inhabitants persist too long in hostility, it may be both politic and right we should banish them and appropriate their lands to a more loyal and useful population. No man will deny that the United States would be benefited by dispossessing a single, prejudiced, hard-headed and disloyal planter, and substitute in his place a dozen or more patient, industrious, good families, even if they be of foreign birth. I think it does good to present this view of the case to many Southern gentlemen, who grow rich and wealthy, not by virtue alone of their industry and skill, but by reason of the protection and impetus to prosperity given by our hitherto moderate and magnanimous Government. It is all idle nonsense for these Southern planters to say that they made the South, that they own it, and that they can do as they please—even to break up our Government, and to shut up the natural avenues of trade, intercourse, and commerce. “We know, and they know, if they are intelligent beings, that, as compared with the whole world, they are but as five millions are to one thousand millions; that they did not create the land; that their only title to its use and usufruct is the deed of the United States, and that if they appeal to war, they hold their ally by a very insecure tenure.