The only government needed or deserved by the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, now exists in Grant’s army.  This needs, simply, enough privates to fill its ranks; all else will follow in due season.  This army has its well-defined code of laws and practice, and can adapt itself to the wants and necessities of a city, the country, the rivers, the sea, indeed to all parts of this land.  It better subserves the interest and policy of the General Government, and the people here prefer it to any weak or servile combination that would at once, from force of habit, revive sad perpetuate local prejudices and passions.  The people of this country have forfeited all right to a voice in the councils of the nation.  They know it and feel it, and in after-years they will be the better citizens from the dear bought experience of the present crisis.  Let them learn now, and learn it well, that good citizens must obey as well as command.  Obedience to law, absolute—­yea, even abject—­is the lesson that this war, under Providence, will teach the free and enlightened American citizen.  As a nation, we shall be the better for it.

I never have apprehended foreign interference in our family quarrel.  Of coarse, governments founded on a different and it may be an antagonistic principle with ours naturally feel a pleasure at our complications, and, it may be, wish our downfall; but in the end England and France will join with us in jubilation at the triumph of constitutional government over faction.  Even now the English manifest this.  I do not profess to understand Napoleon’s design in Mexico, and I do not, see that his taking military possession of Mexico concerns us.  We have as much territory now as we want.  The Mexicans have failed in self-government, and it was a question as to what nation she should fall a prey.  That is now solved, and I don’t see that we are damaged.  We have the finest part of the North American Continent, all we can people and can take care of; and, if we can suppress rebellion in our own land, and compose the strife generated by it, we shall have enough people, resources, and wealth, if well combined, to defy interference from any and every quarter.

I therefore hope the Government of the United States will continue, as heretofore, to collect, in well-organized armies, the physical strength of the nation; applying it, as heretofore, in asserting the national authority; and in persevering, without relaxation, to the end.  This, whether near or far off, is not for us to say; but, fortunately, we have no choice.  We must succeed—­no other choice is left us except degradation.  The South must be ruled by us, or she will rule us.  We must conquer them, or ourselves be conquered.  There is no middle course.  They ask, and will have, nothing else, and talk of compromise is bosh; for we know they would even scorn the offer.

I wish the war could have been deferred for twenty years, till the superabundant population of the North could flow in and replace the losses sustained by war; but this could not be, and we are forced to take things as they are.