which questions must frequently arise to be settled only by the sword; agitate the peaceful current of their lives with ever-recurring waves of war; allow their individuality, their liberty of thought and speech, to become absorbed, year after year, in that oneness of purpose, that subordination to another’s will, which military law requires, and they will become as ready, as others have before them, to seek rest, stability and peace at the expense of liberty and equality, under the rigour of despotic rule. There is one other thought I would refer to, in considering these causes, which keep the North so true to the Union. It is this: these same causes must operate powerfully in hastening the return of the South to her allegiance, when once her military power is broken. I speak, now, upon the supposition that her military power can be broken. This I have never doubted, and never expect to. If we crush her political and military leaders, stop for a season the systematic lying by which she has been deluded, give her time to cool and consider, she will cheerfully return to her allegiance. If her territory were separated from ours by great natural barriers, if she were a distinct and oppressed nationality, like Poland, or Hungary, or Italy, or Ireland; if her people were of a different race, spoke a different language, professed a different religion, and were fighting in a righteous, or at least a reasonable cause,――then we might doubt the possibility of the restoration of good feeling. There is no doubt but that the South is carrying on the war with great unanimity, for war creates its own arguments; but there is no reason to believe that the masses of the South have ever been convinced that their leaders were right in beginning the war, or that the breaking up of the Union could ever ultimate in anything but disaster to themselves and their posterity. There is great reason to believe that the arch leaders themselves did not contemplate, at the outset, the destruction of this government, with a view of establishing two or more independent ones as a final result. They wanted a new constitution. They could not change the old one in a constitutional way; they chose to make a new one in an unconstitutional way. They expected the Border States would immediately come under it; they expected soon to absorb the Middle States, and the lower tier of the Northwestern States, and finally all the rest, when these had become sufficiently humbled. They expected to avoid civil war; they thought the North quite too craven and mercenary for that, and, as a chief means of success in accomplishing these ends, they counted upon the aid of a powerful party in the North. This aid they received, backed by such journals as the _New York Herald_ and scores of others, all advocating the adoption of the Montgomery Constitution, until the bombardment of Fort Sumter awoke the loyalty of the Northern masses, and the majesty of the United States Government.