But there are exceptions to the adoption of this peaceful policy which it will not be wise to overlook.  If there be violent and wanton attacks upon the persons or the property of the citizens of the United States or of their government, I see not how demands for immediate redress can be avoided.  If any interruptions should be attempted of the regular channels of trade on the great water-courses or on the ocean, they cannot long be permitted.  And if any considerable minorities of citizens should be persecuted or proscribed on account of their attachment to the Union, and should call for protection, I cannot deny the obligation of this government to afford it.  There are persons in many of the States whose patriotic declarations and honorable pledges of support of the Union may bring down upon them more than the ill-will of their infatuated fellow-citizens.  It would be impossible for the people of the United States to look upon any proscription of them with indifference.  These are times which should bring together all men, by whatever party name they may have been heretofore distinguished, upon common ground.

When I heard the gentlemen from Virginia the other day so bravely and so forcibly urging their manly arguments in support of the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws, my heart involuntarily bounded towards them as brethren sacredly engaged in a common cause.  Let them, said I to myself, accept the offered settlement of the differences that remain between us, on some fair basis like that proposed by the committee, and then, what is to prevent us all, who yet believe that the Union must be preserved, from joining heart and hand our common forces to effect it?  When the cry goes out that the ship is in danger of sinking, the first duty of every man on board, no matter what his particular vocation, is to lend all the strength he has to the work of keeping her afloat.  What! shall it be said that we waver in the view of those who begin by trying to expunge the sacred memory of the fourth of July?  Shall we help them to obliterate the associations that cluster around the glorious struggle for independence, or stultify the labors of the patriots who erected this magnificent political edifice upon the adamantine base of human liberty?  Shall we surrender the fame of Washington and Laurens, of Gadsden and the Lees, of Jefferson and Madison, and of the myriads of heroes whose names are imperishably connected with the memory of a united people?  Never, never!

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JUNIOR