* * * * *

Mr. President, we are on the wrong tack; we have been from the
beginning. The people begin to see it. Here we have been hurling gallant
fellows on to death, and the blood of Americans has been shed--for what?
They have shown their prowess, respectively--that which belongs to
the race--and shown it like men. But for what have the United States
soldiers, according to the exposition we have heard here to-day, been
shedding their blood, and displaying their dauntless courage? It has
been to carry out principles that three fourths of them abhor; for the
principles contained in this bill, and continually avowed on the floor
of the Senate, are not shared, I venture to say, by one fourth of the
army.

I have said, sir, that we are on the wrong tack. Nothing but ruin, utter
ruin, to the North, to the South, to the East, to the West, will follow
the prosecution of this contest. You may look forward to countless
treasures all spent for the purpose of desolating and ravaging this
continent; at the end leaving us just where we are now; or if the forces
of the United States are successful in ravaging the whole South, what on
earth will be done with it after that is accomplished? Are not gentlemen
now perfectly satisfied that they have mistaken a people for a faction?
Are they not perfectly satisfied that, to accomplish their object, it
is necessary to subjugate, to conquer--aye, to exterminate--nearly ten
millions of people? Do you not know it? Does not everybody know it? Does
not the world know it? Let us pause, and let the Congress of the United
States respond to the rising feeling all over this land in favor of
peace. War is separation; in the language of an eminent gentleman now
no more, it is disunion, eternal and final disunion. We have separation
now; it is only made worse by war, and an utter extinction of all