lasted utterly cut off all hope of compromise. I believed that war, if
long enough continued, would be final, eternal disunion. I said it; I
meant it; and accordingly, to the utmost of my ability and influence, I
exerted myself in behalf of the policy of non-coercion. It was adopted
by Mr. Buchanan's administration, with the almost unanimous consent of
the Democratic and Constitutional Union parties in and out of Congress;
and in February, with the consent of a majority of the Republican party
in the Senate and the House. But that party most disastrously for the
country refused all compromise. How, indeed, could they accept any? That
which the South demanded, and the Democratic and Conservative parties of
the North and West were willing to grant, and which alone could avail to
keep the peace and save the Union, implied a surrender of the sole vital
element of the party and its platform, of the very principle, in fact,
upon which it had just won the contest for the Presidency, not, indeed,
by a majority of the popular vote--the majority was nearly a million
against it,--but under the forms of the Constitution. Sir, the crime,
the "high crime," of the Republican party was not so much its refusal
to compromise, as its original organization upon a basis and doctrine
wholly inconsistent with the stability of the Constitution and the peace
of the Union.

The President-elect was inaugurated; and now, if only the policy of
non-coercion could be maintained, and war thus averted, time would do
its work in the North and the South, and final peaceable adjustment
and reunion be secured. Some time in March it was announced that the
President had resolved to continue the policy of his predecessor, and
even go a step farther, and evacuate Sumter and the other Federal forts
and arsenals in the seceded States. His own party acquiesced; the whole
country rejoiced. The policy of non-coercion had triumphed, and for
once, sir, in my life, I found myself in an immense majority. No man