I must abide, let the effect of the future on my sagacity be what it
may. I have not yet seen any reason to doubt its accuracy. I now
repeat it. The experiment will ignominiously fail.

But there are exceptions to the adoption of this peaceful policy
which it will not be wise to overlook. If there be violent and
wanton attacks upon the persons or the property of the citizens of
the United States or of their government, I see not how demands for
immediate redress can be avoided. If any interruptions should be
attempted of the regular channels of trade on the great
water-courses or on the ocean, they cannot long be permitted. And if
any considerable minorities of citizens should be persecuted or
proscribed on account of their attachment to the Union, and should
call for protection, I cannot deny the obligation of this government
to afford it. There are persons in many of the States whose
patriotic declarations and honorable pledges of support of the Union
may bring down upon them more than the ill-will of their infatuated
fellow-citizens. It would be impossible for the people of the United
States to look upon any proscription of them with indifference.
These are times which should bring together all men, by whatever
party name they may have been heretofore distinguished, upon common
ground.

When I heard the gentlemen from Virginia the other day so bravely
and so forcibly urging their manly arguments in support of the
Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws, my heart
involuntarily bounded towards them as brethren sacredly engaged in a
common cause. Let them, said I to myself, accept the offered
settlement of the differences that remain between us, on some fair
basis like that proposed by the committee, and then, what is to