"If your people will not aid the government in maintaining the public property in the seceding states, then we must do it in spite of you, or perish in the attempt. We must not allow the government to crumble at our feet. You can arrest this movement, and you alone can do it. I ask you, gentlemen from Virginia and the south, does not your blood boil with indignation when you read of the surrender of our forts and the dishonor of our flag? Are they not yours as well as mine? Has the feeling of sectionalism become stronger than love of country? I ask if the same patriotism which brought your fathers and mine into common battlefields, amid all the storms of the Revolution, does not now rebel when you are forced into a civil war by the madness of a few men in the southern states? Sir, I do not believe it. For the moment, under the smart of imaginary wrongs, under the disappointment of political defeat, your people may be hurried into acts of madness; but when returning reason comes, woe be to them who have led them astray! Then a single wave of the star-spangled banner will silence the miserable party cries with which you have misled them. "Let us not deceive ourselves with the idea that this government can be broken up on Mason and Dixon's line, or upon any other line, without involving us in all we dread. There is no man, with a head to reason and a heart to feel, who does not shudder at the idea of civil war. Do you suppose that this government can be divided into two, according to the plan of the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Garnett), with this capitol, with the mouth of the Mississippi, with the territories, and a thousand things that unite us, without provoking civil war? Why, sir, we may do all we can to prevent it; we may throw ourselves into the breach; we may stand up and yield everything, or cringe down and yield everything; but I tell you that will not stop the surging waves. If this government is divided, though we may agree to separate in peace--though every man here may sign the bond--we know that events hurriedly running forward will bring these two sections in hostile array against each other; and then, what a war is there, my countrymen! I know that your southern people are brave, spirited, active, quick; no man doubts that; but if you have made any misapprehension about the northern people--if you suppose that, because they are cold, because they are not fired by your hot blood, they will not perform their duty everywhere, you are very much mistaken. We are the equals of each other; we are of the same blood, the same parentage, the same character; your warm sun has quickened your blood, but our cold climate has steadied our intellects and braced our energies.