Another great and important natural truth is still in contest, and can only be solved by war.  Numerical majorities by vote have been our great arbiter.  Heretofore all men have cheerfully submitted to it in questions left open, but numerical majorities are not necessarily physical majorities.  The South, though numerically inferior, contend they can whip the Northern superiority of numbers, and therefore by natural law they contend that they are not bound to submit.  This issue is the only real one, and in my judgment all else should be deferred to it.  War alone can decide it, and it is the only question now left for us as a people to decide.  Can we whip the South?  If we can, our numerical majority has both the natural and constitutional right to govern them.  If we cannot whip them, they contend for the natural right to select their own government, and they have the argument.  Our armies must prevail over theirs; our officers, marshals, and courts, must penetrate into the innermost recesses of their land, before we have the natural right to demand their submission.

I would banish all minor questions, assert the broad doctrine that as a nation the United States has the right, and also the physical power, to penetrate to every part of our national domain, and that we will do it—­that we will do it in our own time and in our own way; that it makes no difference whether it be in one year, or two, or ten, or twenty; that we will remove and destroy every obstacle, if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, every thing that to us seems proper; that we will not cease till the end is attained; that all who do not aid us are enemies, and that we will not account to them for our acts.  If the people of the South oppose, they do so at their peril; and if they stand by, mere lookers-on in this domestic tragedy, they have no right to immunity, protection, or share in the final results.

I even believe and contend further that, in the North, every member of the nation is bound by both natural and constitutional law to “maintain and defend the Government against all its enemies and opposers whomsoever.”  If they fail to do it they are derelict, and can be punished, or deprived of all advantages arising from the labors of those who do.  If any man, North or South, withholds his share of taxes, or his physical assistance in this, the crisis of our history, he should be deprived of all voice in the future elections of this country, and might be banished, or reduced to the condition of a mere denizen of the land.

War is upon us, none can deny it.  It is not the choice of the Government of the United States, but of a faction; the Government was forced to accept the issue, or to submit to a degradation fatal and disgraceful to all the inhabitants.  In accepting war, it should be “pure and simple” as applied to the belligerents.  I would keep it so, till all traces of the war are effaced; till those who appealed to it are sick and tired of it, and come to the emblem of our nation, and sue for peace.  I would not coax them, or even meet them half-way, but make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.