with the almost unanimous consent of the Democratic and Constitutional Union parties in and out of Congress; and in February, with the consent of a majority of the Republican party in the Senate and the House.  But that party most disastrously for the country refused all compromise.  How, indeed, could they accept any?  That which the South demanded, and the Democratic and Conservative parties of the North and West were willing to grant, and which alone could avail to keep the peace and save the Union, implied a surrender of the sole vital element of the party and its platform, of the very principle, in fact, upon which it had just won the contest for the Presidency, not, indeed, by a majority of the popular vote—­the majority was nearly a million against it,—­but under the forms of the Constitution.  Sir, the crime, the “high crime,” of the Republican party was not so much its refusal to compromise, as its original organization upon a basis and doctrine wholly inconsistent with the stability of the Constitution and the peace of the Union.

The President-elect was inaugurated; and now, if only the policy of non-coercion could be maintained, and war thus averted, time would do its work in the North and the South, and final peaceable adjustment and reunion be secured.  Some time in March it was announced that the President had resolved to continue the policy of his predecessor, and even go a step farther, and evacuate Sumter and the other Federal forts and arsenals in the seceded States.  His own party acquiesced; the whole country rejoiced.  The policy of non-coercion had triumphed, and for once, sir, in my life, I found myself in an immense majority.  No man then pretended that a Union founded in consent could be cemented by force.  Nay, more, the President and the Secretary of State went farther.  Said Mr. Seward, in an official diplomatic letter to Mr. Adams:  “For these reasons, he (the President) would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs (the secessionists), namely, that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience by conquest, although he were disposed to question that proposition.  But in fact the President willingly accepts it as true.  Only an imperial or despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State.” * * * This Federal republican system of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is most unfitted for such a labor.  This, sir, was on the 10th of April, and yet on that very day the fleet was under sail for Charleston.  The policy of peace had been abandoned.  Collision followed; the militia were ordered out; civil war began.

Now, sir, on the 14th of April, I believed that coercion would bring on war, and war disunion.  More than that, I believed what you all believe in your hearts to-day, that the South could never be conquered—­never.  And not that only, but I was satisfied—­and you of the Abolition party have now proved it to the world—­that the secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the State. * * * These were my convictions on the 14th of April.  Had I changed them on the 15th, when I read the President’s proclamation, * * *