"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, as 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 benefitted by dispossessing a single prejudiced, hard-headed, and disloyal planter, and substituting 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 grew 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.... Whilst I assert for our Government the highest military prerogatives, I am willing to bear in patience that political nonsense of slave-rights, State-rights, freedom of conscience, freedom of press, and such other trash, as have deluded the Southern people into war, anarchy, bloodshed, and the foulest crimes that have disgraced any time or any people.