States to the nation shall be practically restored without disturbance of the institution; and if this were done, my whole duty in this respect, under the Constitution and my oath of office, would be performed.  But it is not done, and we are trying to accomplish it by war.  The incidents of the war cannot be avoided.  If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion,—­by the mere incidents of the war.  It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.  Much of its value is gone already.  How much better for you and for your people to take the step which at once shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event?  How much better to thus save the money which else we sink for ever in the war!  How much better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long render us pecuniarily unable to do it!  How much better for you as seller, and the nation as buyer, to sell out and buy out that without which the war could never have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another’s throats!

From a Letter to Cuthbert Bullitt.  July 28, 1862

Now, I think the true remedy is very different from that suggested by Mr. Durant.  It does not lie in rounding the rough angles of the war, but in removing the necessity for the war.  The people of Louisiana who wish protection to person and property, have but to reach forth their hands and take it.  Let them in good faith reinaugurate the national authority, and set up a State government conforming thereto under the Constitution.  They know how to do it, and can have the protection of the army while doing it.  The army will be withdrawn as soon as such government can dispense with its presence, and the people of the State can then, upon the old constitutional terms, govern themselves to their own liking.  This is very simple and easy.

If they will not do this, if they prefer to hazard all for the sake of destroying the government, it is for them to consider whether it is probable that I will surrender the government to save them from losing all.  If they decline what I suggest, you will scarcely need to ask what I will do.

What would you do in my position?  Would you drop the war where it is, or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose-water?  Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones?  Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means untried?

I am in no boastful mood.  I shall not do more than I can; but I shall do all I can to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination.  I shall do nothing in malice.  What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.

Letter to August Belmont.  July 31, 1862