it is a question which the President seems never to have thought of. As
to the mode of terminating the war and securing peace, the President is
equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more
vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy's
country; and after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the
President drops down into a half-despairing tone, and tells us that "with
a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government
subject to constant changes by successive revolutions, the continued
success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace." Then he
suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the
counsels of their own leaders, and, trusting in our protestations, to set
up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us
that "this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace." But soon
he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already
half-abandoned ground of "more vigorous prosecution." All this shows that
the President is in nowise satisfied with his own positions. First he
takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it he argues himself out
of it, then seizes another and goes through the same process, and then,
confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old
one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, taxed beyond
its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on
a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be
at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere
intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At its
beginning, General Scott was by this same President driven into disfavor
if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less
than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months,
during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes,