are contesting and disputing about the profits of an estate which is
threatened with total submersion.

Mr. President, it is passion, passion--party, party, and intemperance--that
is all I dread in the adjustment of the great questions which unhappily at
this time divide our distracted country. Sir, at this moment we have in the
legislative bodies of this Capitol and in the States, twenty-odd furnaces
in full blast, emitting heat and passion, and intemperance, and diffusing
them throughout the whole extent of this broad land. Two months ago all was
calm in comparison to the present moment. All now is uproar, confusion, and
menace to the existence of the Union, and to the happiness and safety of
this people. Sir, I implore Senators, I entreat them, by all that they
expect hereafter, and by all that is dear to them here below, to repress
the ardor of these passions, to look to their country to its interests, to
listen to the voice of reason.

Mr. President, I have said--what I solemnly believe--that the dissolution
of the Union and war are identical and inseparable; that they are
convertible terms. Such a war, too, as that would be, following the
dissolution of the Union! Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none
so furious, so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating, from the wars of
Greece down, including those of the Commonwealth of England, and the
revolution of France--none, none of them raged with such violence, or was
ever conducted with such bloodshed and enormities, as will that war which
shall follow that disastrous event--if that event ever happen--the
dissolution of the Union.

And what would be its termination? Standing armies and navies, draining the
revenues of each portion of the dissevered empire, would be created;
exterminating war would follow-not a war of two or three years, but of