No President, And I Think No Congress,
Will Desire Such A War.
Nor will the people clamor for it, even
should the idea of such a war be popular.
The people of America are
not clamorous against their government. If there be such a war it
will be because the army shall have then become more powerful than
the government. If the President can hold his own, the people will
support him in his desire for peace. But if the President do not
hold his own - if some general, with two or three hundred thousand
men at his back, shall then have the upper hand in the nation - it is
too probable that the people may back him. The old game will be
played again that has so often been played in the history of
nations, and some wretched military aspirant will go forth to flood
Canada with blood, in order that the feathers of his cap may flaunt
in men's eyes and that he may be talked of for some years to come as
one of the great curses let loose by the Almighty on mankind.
I must confess that there is danger of this. To us the danger is
very great. It cannot be good for us to send ships laden outside
with iron shields instead of inside with soft goods and hardware to
these thickly thronged American ports. It cannot be good for us to
have to throw millions into these harbors instead of taking millions
out from them. It cannot be good for us to export thousands upon
thousands of soldiers to Canada of whom only hundreds would return.
The whole turmoil, cost, and paraphernalia of such a course would be
injurious to us in the extreme, and the loss of our commerce would
be nearly ruinous. But the injury of such a war to us would be as
nothing to the injury which it would inflict upon the States. To
them for many years it would be absolutely ruinous. It would entail
not only all those losses which such a war must bring with it, but
that greater loss which would arise to the nation from the fact of
its having been powerless to prevent it. Such a war would prove
that it had lost the freedom for which it had struggled, and which
for so many years it has enjoyed. For the sake of that people as
well as for our own - and for their sakes rather than for our own -
let us, as far as may be, abstain from words which are needlessly
injurious. They have done much that is great and noble, ever since
this war has begun, and we have been slow to acknowledge it. They
have made sacrifices for the sake of their country which we have
ridiculed. They have struggled to maintain a good cause, and we
have disbelieved in their earnestness. They have been anxious to
abide by their Constitution, which to them has been as it were a
second gospel, and we have spoken of that Constitution as though it
had been a thing of mere words in which life had never existed.
This has been done while their hands are very full and their back
heavily laden.
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